Banking royal commission: Kenneth Hayne appeals to Bankwest ‘victims’ for new evidence

‘Victims’ of CBA subsidiary Bankwest have been urged to make claims on issues not yet covered by the royal commission.

Kenneth Hayne says the inquiry’s job is to investigate “without fear or favour”.

Royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne has told self-identified victims of Commonwealth Bank’s wholly-owned Bankwest subsidiary to contribute claims relating to issues that have not yet been focused on by the royal commission.

Mr Hayne, in his opening remarks to the fourth round of hearings for the banking and financial services royal commission in Brisbane, addressed criticisms that the inquiry had not conducted a credible or thorough investigation into CBA’s conduct after the 2008 takeover of Bankwest.

Aggrieved customers have sent the royal commission submissions calling on Mr Hayne to seek more time from the government to conduct further investigation into Bankwest’s conduct when lending to small businesses.

Today, Mr Hayne said a flurry of submissions were “seeking to agitate” further inquiry into the behaviour of Bankwest, and a number of claims in the media and in those submissions about the royal commission’s process were “not correct”.

“The work of the commission regarding the CBA takeover of Bankwest to that date has been intensive,” Mr Hayne said, noting the inquiry was “not limited to the four witnesses who gave evidence” at the hearings.

Mr Hayne reiterated that he had not yet “made any findings” from the royal commission. “My findings … are matters to be dealt with when I report — a task that remains some time away,” he said.

He said the commission would continue to consider any matters raised with it and that submissions were still open.

Mr Hayne said he had made clear that the commission would “derive most assistance” if those who take up the invitation to make a submission focus on issues that have not yet been raised by the hearings, or issues that were backed by evidence and were not unsubstantiated claims.

He said any additional information could “trigger procedural fairness obligations” in relation to other cases.

Mr Hayne said the commission’s job was not to advocate on behalf of aggrieved customers, but to inquire “without fear or favour” into matters captured by the terms of the royal commission.

Mr Hayne said many criticisms had wrongly assumed there was no interaction between witnesses and the royal commission before the hearings or that it looked over a number of submissions.

“I read those submissions before deciding to grant leave. I looked at them very carefully, as did royal commission staff,” he said.

The barristers assisting the banking royal commission backed CBA’s controversial actions after it bought Bankwest for $2.1 billion a decade ago, at the height of the global financial crisis. Senior counsel Michael Hodge QC said CBA’s review of Bankwest’s business loan book, dubbed Project Magellan, seemed both prudent and responsible.

The royal commission reviewed more than 13,000 documents obtained from CBA, which Mr Hodge said did not reveal evidence that Project Magellan was undertaken with any motive to deliberately make certain types of assessments about particular accounts.

More than 40 former Bankwest customers made submissions to the commission, with four chosen to give evidence during the two-week small business inquiry that finished last month.

Mr Hodge submitted there should be no findings of misconduct in any of the four cases.

But he said Mr Hayne could conclude CBA’s conduct involved errors of communication and transparency that fell below community standards and expectations.