And via the ABC:
Senior counsel assisting the commission Michael Hodge QC appears to have finally and completely lost patience with CBA witness Marianne Perkovic.
Hodge: Ms Perkovic, is the reason that you are dissembling in the way that you are dissembling because you are trying to pre-emptively explain why it took CFPL (Commonwealth Financial Planning Limited) more than two years to notify ASIC of its breach?
Perkovic: I’m trying to, yes, I’m trying to, um, sorry, I’m just trying to explain to you, in this two year period before we actually identified that we actually had a problem with OGS, as to what we were solving for with the information that was in front of us in a broader context of the business.
Prompting another intervention from commissioner Kenneth Hayne:
Ms Perkovic, I do not regard that as answering counsel’s question. Please ask the question again. I want you to listen to it and I want you to answer it directly as you can.
The commission ended with CBA’s Marianne Perkovic finally conceding that the bank habitually charged customers for services that were not provided.
Senior counsel assisting the commission Michael Hodge QC and Commissioner Kenneth Hayne grew increasingly impatient with Ms Perkovic, as I explained to Linda Mottram on PM.
After disputing the meaning to be attributed to internal memos between the bank’s senior managers in early 2012, Ms Perkovic eventually had to admit that a Deloitte report handed to CBA in July 2012 revealed systemic problems in ensuring that customers weren’t being charged for financial advice they did not receive.
Deloitte had found that at least $700,000 in ongoing service fees were being charged to more than 1,050 clients that were allocated to more than 50 inactive financial planners who had left the business before 2012.
It appears that Ms Perkovic was finally ground down by relentless questioning from Michael Hodge QC, warnings from Commissioner Kenneth Hayne and the irrefutable evidence of the Deloitte report.
Extraordinary stuff. The credibility of the entire banking system appears sunk. Via the AFR:
Commonwealth Bank’s corporate reputation has taken a battering after a year in which it was embroiled in a series of scandals and saw the departure of its chief executive and a number of executives.
The ranking of the nation’s biggest bank in the Reputation Institute’s Australian Corporate Reputation Index plummeted 21 places from 36 to 57.
The index, which was first conducted in 2008 and is based on an online survey of almost 6000 people, ranks companies accounting to seven criteria: product, performance, leadership, governance, citizenship, workplace and levels of innovation. It was completed over February and March, amid the early stages of the banking royal commission.
The great Australian control fraud on full display.
