In the initial public hearing for the royal commission, senior counsel assisting the commission Rowena Orr QC said out of the 385 submissions received through the online form on the commission’s website, 49 per cent relate to banking, 18 per cent relate to superannuation, 6 per cent relate to the general insurance market and 6 per cent relate to the total permanent disability insurance market.
The online form requested anyone making a submission to describe the nature of the dealing to which their submission is related. Of the responses received up till now, the majority refer to personal finance at approximately 31 per cent, superannuation at 17 per cent, small business finance at 13 per cent, mortgage brokers at 12 per cent and financial advice at 9 per cent.
The online form also asked the person making the submission to nominate the part of the commission’s terms of reference that their submission relates to.
“We have seen already that many of the submissions relate to more than one part of the terms of reference. To date, approximately 84 per cent of submissions relate to misconduct or conduct of financial service entities that falls below community standards, 40 per cent relate to culture and governance practices of financial services entities and 35 per cent relate to the effectiveness of redress for consumers,” said Ms Orr.
“In relation to the effectiveness of redress, we have seen a large number of submissions that express frustration and concern about the time taken and effort required to navigate the internal and external dispute resolution frameworks that apply to financial services entities.”
