Westpac boss shuns victims, CBA chief Matt Comyn admits greed contributed to misconduct

Westpac’s CEO tells committee he hasn’t met with any victims of the bank’s misconduct whose cases were aired at bank inquiry.

Westpac's CEO Brian Hartzer appearing at a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics at Parliament House in Canberra.

Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer has told parliament he has not met with a single victim of the bank’s misconduct who complained to the financial services royal commission.

Appearing before the House of Representatives economics committee this afternoon, Mr Hartzer said he regularly met with customers, including ones who had complaints.

But under questioning by committee deputy chairman, Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite, Mr Hartzer admitted he had not met any of the people who complained to the commission about their treatment at the hands of Westpac.

“Personally, of the ones that were in the commission, no,” he said.

He said he accepted responsibility for misconduct at the bank laid bare by the commission.

An interim report released by commissioner Kenneth Hayne last month was “incredibly confronting and the stories are very sad”.

“On behalf of Westpac I’d like to once again apologise unreservedly to the customers we have let down,” he said.

He said Westpac had improved its remuneration by decoupling most pay from sales, hired a new top-level executive to deal with customer complaints but said the bank poorly handled the move away from the commission-based model for advice that was in place before the 2014 Future of Financial Advice reforms.

Banking culture also needed an overhaul, with new regulations and tougher penalties not enough on their own, he said.

“It’s really clear that we have a lot of work to do to restore community trust,” he said.

Asked by committee chairman and Liberal MP for Goldstein, Tim Wilson, if the buck stopped with him, Mr Hartzer responded: “Absolutely as the chief executive I’m ultimately responsible for everything that goes on at the bank.”

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn. Picture: AAP

Earlier in the day, CBA chief executive Matt Comyn admitted greed played a part in misconduct exposed by the banking royal commission.

Appearing before a parliamentary inquiry this morning, Mr Comyn said that within the bank there had been failures of leadership, a failure to invest in compliance systems “and in some cases greed”.

“We became complacent,” he told the House of Representatives economics committee.

He said the misconduct exposed by the royal commission was due to “a number of significant failures on our part”.

“These failures are our fault and we are working very hard to address these failures.”

He said a scathing review commissioned by the prudential regulator presented a “critical but fair” view of the bank, which was implementing its recommendations in full.

And he admitted the bank’s successful lobbying efforts to water down Future of Financial Advice reforms introduced in 2014 was misguided.

“We should have implemented FOFA in full,” he said.

“I don’t think we went far enough in removing things like conflicted remuneration.

“We focused too much on things like adviser viability.”

The committee will hear from ANZ’s Shayne Elliott tomorrow and NAB’s Andrew Thorburn next Friday.