On December 14th, 2017 the Australian government launched the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation, and Financial Services Industry. The Commission was launched on the heels of numerous banking scandals involving the Big Four Australian banks. The Commission provided a preliminary report in August of 2018 and the final report was made public in February of 2019. Ultimately, the Commission found evidence of bribery, forgery, inadequate lending practices, lying to regulators, and even charging fees to people who were dead.
The preliminary Commission report concluded that the primary cause of this misconduct was:
“…greed – the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of basic standards of honesty…From the executive suite to the front line, staff were measured and rewarded by reference to profit and sales…When misconduct was revealed, it either went unpunished or the consequences did not meet the seriousness of what had been done.”