Bank executives caught up in the Government’s Bank Executive Accountability Regime (BEAR) are simply being treated the same way as financial planners, according to the Federal Treasurer, Scott Morrison.
Morrison has used national radio to claim that the arrangements imposed on bank executives under the BEAR are no more arduous than those already imposed on financial planners.
“… if you are a financial planner you have to be licenced. You face accountability when things go wrong. You can be deregistered; you can no longer work in your industry. But [for] senior banking executives, no current regime exists for that,” he said.
“You have to be accountable to your customers too if you are a financial planner but there are regulations that would bar people from industries where they do the wrong thing and misbehave in many other parts of our economy. But they don’t apply to senior bank executives. So we are changing that.”
