The next few weeks and months will prove testing for Australia's banking sector, and for the majors in particular as the results come out from a number of long-running inquiries into how they do business.Senior executives from Australia's main financial services regulators were gently grilled by the Senate Economics Legislation Committee as to progress of the investigations, and what was yet to come for the banking and finance sector. ASIC was the first agency to be quizzed, and the Senators were keen to hear more about the court case against Westpac, which was announced the previous day.  ASIC's senior executive responsible for banking, Michael Saadat, told the committee the case against Westpac's loan approval process had its genesis in 2015, when ASIC started looking at interest only loans as a proxy for the conduct of 11 different lenders, including Westpac.Under scrutiny from the committee, Saadat explained that the reason his review stopped in mid-2015 was because at that point ASIC started discussing the matter with Westpac and the behaviour that concerned ASIC ceased - but that's not to say it wasn't replicated in other banks."We decided to bring the litigation [nevertheless] because of the importance of the issues it raises," Saadat said."We are not alleging that there are any customers defaulting on their loans as a result of this conduct. What we are saying is the process Westpac used to assess the suitability of the loans was not consistent with what their legal obligations require. Whether or not people are defaulting now is an important question but is not the only question."His colleague, ASIC's deputy chair Peter Kell, added that one of the intentions of the responsible lending legislation was to allow regulators to step in before borrowers got into difficulties.He also told Senator Kate Gallagher, in response to a lengthy series of questions, that ASIC was likely to provide an update within the next few weeks on how some of its long-running actions are proceeding."First on this list was a review of how the largest advice firms dealt with rogue advisers; how they've identified them; and how they have also, as part of the program, remediated their clients," Saadat said.Some of these remediation programs have been underway for up to three years, a rate of progress that Kell admitted was of concern to ASIC."We hope to make an announcement on the work we've been doing with other lenders in the next few weeks," he said.And when the same point came up again on trust and confidence, ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft reminded the committee of his comments six months ago when he suggested that tracker mortgages be offered to bank customers."It's endemic", one industry adviser told Banking Day last night.At least one major bank commissioned reviews of its user of algorithmic models on household expenses and the "surplus" estimated as available to meet loan repayments.