Consumers losing confidence in banks: ISA

Questions have been raised around the ability of banks to put client's interest first in the wake of recent concerns around bank based financial advice.

In research of 1000 people conducted by UMR Research last month, and released by Industry Super Australia (ISA), 71 per cent agreed that reports of poor financial advice from the big banks indicated their boards were not working effectively.

Around two-thirds of survey respondents claimed that bank-owned super funds were overly focused on making a profit from customers' retirement savings.

ISA chief executive, David Whiteley said the surveyed captured the level of mistrust in banks that partly stemmed from recent negative reports around financial advice failures.

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"Over the last decade, the big banks have had to pay millions of dollars to customers in refunds, compensation or settlements, and have been the subject of investigations and other enforcement action by the regulator and police," Whiteley said.

"I think the community at large doesn't have a high level of trust in the banks, particularly people over 30. If Australians formed a view that government proposals intentionally or unintentionally benefited the banks, at the expense of consumers, that could be of concern to them."

He said despite these consumer concerns banks were still "on a campaign to reduce consumer protections and gain market share" by seeking to remove consumer protection and by changing "the character and structure of their better performing competitors, industry super funds".