CBA responds to senate report delay
The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has responded to its grilling at a Senate Committee by restating its compliance with the inquiry’s requests for more information.
It comes as a Senate Committee investigating the regulator’s handling of embroiled Commonwealth Financial Planning (CommFP) and Financial Wisdom (FWL) advisers said the latest insights from the bank and Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) left “unanswered questions” about compensation consistency.
CBA said it had provided two submissions to the Senate Committee investigating ASIC’s handling of the situation, one in November 2013 and the second on May 16 this year.
It also said it had tried to “remediate” affected customers to restore their finances to the point they would be at if they had had appropriate advice in the first place.
But committee labelled the most recent efforts by ASIC and CBA to correct the record “sketchy”.
It has now delayed its final report, pending further insight from both parties.
“The revelation suggested that, for some time, the CBA had not kept either the committee or ASIC fully informed about the compensation process for clients affected by serious misconduct with the CBA’s businesses,” the interim report said.
CBA said it remained “extremely disappointed” that a number of advisers for the two CBA businesses did not provide quality advice.
It said its next steps were to send letters to affected CommFP and FWL clients, with offers of up to $5000 for quality advice from independent advisers.
“We have worked with affected customers to put things right, remediating them to the position they would have been in had they received appropriate advice,” the bank said.
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