Public sentiment hardens against big banks in wake of royal commission: Omnipoll

New polling has found public sentiment hardening against the big banks amid damaging revelations from the royal commission.

Nearly one-in-two people were critical of the Commonwealth Bank in the survey. Picture: Hollie Adams

New polling has found public sentiment hardening against the big banks amid damaging revelations from the royal commission with disillusionment most pronounced among older Australians aged over 65 years.

The survey, conducted by former Newspoll chief executive Martin O’Shannessy’s company OmniPoll, reveals each of the four major banks has experienced an increase of about 20 per cent in negative sentiment over the past 18 months with nearly one-in-two people critical of the Commonwealth Bank.

The damning results come as the Standing Committee on Economics prepares for a robust series of hearings with bank chiefs this Thursday and Friday in Canberra following findings of widespread misconduct in the sector.

How consumers feel about the banks

It will be the first opportunity for MPs to grill the banks since the tabling of the interim report of the royal commission into the banking, finance and superannuation sector led by former High Court Justice, Kenneth Hayne.

Deputy chair of the economics committee, Labor’s Matt Thistlethwaite, today flagged that the hearings would be spirited and told The Australian he would be demanding an explanation for the banks’ poor behaviour.

“I want to ask the executives how it got to this,” he said.

“How it is that the highest paid and supposedly best qualified and trained company directors of the largest corporations in Australia allowed this behaviour to go on for as long and destroy the Australian public’s confidence in their brand and their products when the red flags where there eight or nine years ago?”

Chair of the economics committee, Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson, told The Australian that the “conclusions of Hayne’s interim report will obviously be a core focus — particularly

that problems stem from culture and incentives, as well as the enforcement of old regulation over the need for new regulation”.

Today’s OmniPoll results show the public believe the worst performing bank is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The findings reveal that 47 per cent of those surveyed had unfavourable impressions of the bank compared with about 40 per cent for the other majors.

Westpac and NAB both recorded unfavourable impressions from 39 per cent of those sampled compared to 38 per cent for the ANZ.

While 23 per cent had unfavourable impressions of the CBA in February 2016, this had increased to 47 per cent by September 2018 — the largest shift in sentiment — while those who had positive feelings towards the bank had dropped from 42 per cent to 26 per cent over the same period.

Opinion was sampled from 1,278 people across the nation over the period September 20 to 25, 2018 and, for each bank, the change from positive to negative sentiment was greatest for those aged over 65 years.

Among those in this age group, unfavourable sentiment for the CBA reached 68 per cent compared to 57 per cent ANZ, 52 per cent for Westpac and 60 per cent NAB.

Sentiment towards the banks still remains mainly favourable among those aged between 18-34 years. Of those surveyed in this age group, 43 per cent were favourable to the CBA compared to 35 per cent for the NAB, 33 per cent for ANZ and 30 per cent for Westpac.