Good People Doing Bad Things – How Did We End Up Here?

It is a story that has made news headlines the world over. A story about culture and greed impairing the judgement of people who should have known better. While both sides of politics have been very vocal in the wake of Hayne’s interim report, no one has touched the vexed question of how did we end up here?  

The impact on the victims has been devastating. The behaviour of the financial services community despicable and unforgivable. The viewing has been a mesmerising blend of ‘can’t watch but can’t look away’.

But to understand how we got here we need to look back nearly 30 years to the remarkable and visionary reforms of the Hawke/Keating government. That is, not at any level to lay blame at their feet but to point to a moment in time where the first piece of a complex puzzle was laid. A puzzle that through the next 25 years would gather a trifecta of seemingly unrelated circumstances to form what has become the tsunami that is now known as the Hayne Royal Commission into Misconduct in Banking and Financial Services.

 The Rise and Rise of the Big 4

Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the “recession we had to have” Hawke and Keating, followed later by Howard and Costello introduced reforms that led to Australian Banks becoming the most robust in the world. Reforms that would combine with the rise of China to open up the economy to what has now become 28 years of consecutive economic growth.

Throughout this period the market capitalisation of these banks has increased ten-fold which given that they occupy 4 of the top 10 holdings in almost every Australian superannuation fund has meant that every working Australian has benefited profoundly from their unmitigated success.

Forward to 2008 and the GFC. The worlds banks imploded under the weight of the subprime crisis and the freezing up of the credit markets. Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros were the high-profile casualties but there were hundreds of others. Australia was not immune. St George lurched into Westpac, Bankwest was rescued by CBA and Suncorp was saved by the timing of the government guarantee. But our big 4 banks prevailed, in-fact before long they were stronger.

We were applauded the world over for the way that our economy survived the worst economic crisis since the 1930s depression with barely a flesh wound. There are those that claim dumb luck, but the strength and management of our big banks were in no small way responsible for Australia dodging a bullet.

To this end, over 25 years Australia’s big 4 banks had developed ‘hero’ status. “Best in the world”, ”pillars of strength and resilience”. Their leaders were held on pedestals and retirees dined out on their ever-increasing flows of franked dividends.

The Mutation

Another of Keating’s great reforms was the introduction of the compulsory superannuation system to deal with Australia’s soon to retire, Baby Boomer generation. In the banks effort to broaden their revenue base and continue with the exponential expansion of their balance sheets, the lure of a multi-trillion dollar pool of retirement saving made a lot of sense. Through the early 2000s each of the major banks made acquisitions to gain a foothold in the market. CBA bought Colonial, NAB purchased MLC, ANZ purchased Mercantile Mutual in a JV with ING and Westpac purchased BT and Rothschild.

In these deals were the beginnings of the mutation that would see these banks lose their way.

The acquisitions were ostensibly, old life companies. Sales based organisations where ‘agents’ were paid a commission for selling a product to a consumer. There was often advice involved but often not. The principle approach was ‘caveat emptor’ and the assumption that if the consumer saved something rather than nothing, then some good had been done. If advice was provided it was paid for by commission from the product manufacturer and effectively the public was trained to place no value on it. Advice became something that came with the product.

But the need for considered, tailored advice was growing. The industry needed to become a profession and move to a fee based model where the public valued the advice and was prepared to pay for it. This was met with an innate resistance, ingrained over many years. The banks did not rail against this but rather acquiesced to their more learned wealth management sales executives who told them “it ain’t broke! Advice is paid for by the product manufacturer because consumers don’t value it”.

The tyranny of the vertically integrated business model prevailed.

The money flowed in. Billions of it. Further acquisitions were made to gain both product advantage and the favour of an increasingly spoilt force of advisors who had come to realise just how valuable their favour was. Consciously and in some cases subconsciously, advisors were adopting business models that made them more valuable to their product manufacturing friends by leveraging the risk of a change in loyalty in return for a large cheque ensuring tenure.

Product manufacturers referred to the advisors in their sphere of influence as ‘distributors’ and acquisitions of distribution networks were made, making many owners of these networks unimaginably wealthy.

The very word ‘distribution’ (not advice) said it all.

 The Regulators Weigh In

This then brings us to the issue of the regulators.

Let us not fool ourselves about the intent of the legislation that has been brought into play over several regimes. Quite rightly, it has been installed to change the behaviours of the industry and to ensure outcomes are focussed on ‘people before profit’. However, through a lack of understanding of the history of the business models and the products that were already in place, the impact these new laws have had is a disappointment.

As each new wave of law failed to gain traction, the complexity of the laws increased and became so prescriptive that tick a box compliance was the only way to comply. Thoughtless, tick a box compliance. This was exacerbated by the constant cries of foul play by the Industry Fund movement who refused to accept that the retail offerings may in fact have offered a reasonable alternative to the moral high ground claimed by the Union backed Industry Fund regime.

For every change the industry adapted, ‘the spirit’ of that change was compromised on both sides of the Retail/Industry fund divide. Thinking was dedicated to how to comply with the law without giving up the behaviour that the law was designed to change. As a result, consumer outcomes only ever improved marginally.

In defence of the self-licensed advice movement, there has always been a constant pressure on the product manufacturing community to improve features and reduce the price of the end superannuation products to the consumer. But this cause was lost in the politics of the broader campaign because advisors need product solutions to execute their advice and the institutions controlled the product and the margin.

War Rooms

When the major institutions were caught out they arrived with armies of lawyers from the top end of town to defend their position and ultimately negotiate on outcomes that were private, less costly and less damaging for the provider. The regulators could not afford to throw the same legal talent at the issue as they did not have the same budget or the internal talent to brief the legal team. It was a case of ‘bows and arrows against the lightening’. The regulator could not afford to lose for fear of loss of reputation or costs being awarded against them and so the ‘enforceable undertaking’ regime began.

This, in a world where the Banks were still harbouring hero status and had an air of invincibility about them. Who were the regulators to question their integrity?

Inside these institutions there was the ongoing pressure to improve dividends to the plethora of shareholders including the superannuation funds that most Australians were members of. There was a sense of untouchability that came with the fact that folklore had seen these institutions save our Nation from the full force of the GFC and that the senior management of these organisation was seen as the epitome of success in the corporate world. Geniuses who were to be revered at all costs and were never questioned or challenged.

Is it any wonder that a mutation in the moral code was let loose at some stage in this journey and went undetected and unmanaged until the blow torch of the Hayne Royal Commission? It was a culture where the unjustifiable became more justified each time the behaviours, the decisions, the mutation went unchallenged.

This Royal Commission has highlighted some heinous behaviours and the recommendations need to seek to ensure that we never find ourselves in this situation again, however it is worth reflecting on the 28 years of history that came together to all but justify the collapse in values that led to the outcomes that have been exposed.

A combination of hero status, invulnerability, shareholder pressure, cultural misalignment and in the end dumb luck led the management of our most revered organisations to turn a blind eye to the social responsibility that is at the core of their existence. Much like the leadership of Australian cricket after a similar period of invulnerability.

“Things are so bad that new laws might not help” Justice Kenneth Hayne

Let us hope that in the fall out we are not burdened with another wave of crippling regulation but laws that need to be thought about. Laws that challenge participants to ask ‘what is the spirit of this law and how do I need to interpret it?’. Tick-a-box compliance leads people to think about what they can get away with. We need new laws that acknowledge the role that these organisations can play in shaping a positive society and a positive economy and a code of conduct installed that all participants embrace as a way forward in the enhancement of a better financial community.

In the words of Commissioner Hayne:

“The law already requires entities to do all things necessary to ensure that the services they are licensed to provide be provided efficiently, honestly and fairly. Much more often than not, the conduct now condemned was contrary to law… Passing some new law to say, again, ‘do not do that’ would add an extra layer of legal complexity to an already complex regulatory regime. What would that gain?

What is needed is better enforcement in order to ensure that banks and other financial institutions apply basic standards of fairness and honesty by obeying the law, not misleading or deceiving, acting fairly, providing services that are fit for purpose, delivering services with reasonable care and skill, and, when acting for another, acting in the best interests of that other?”