A A$20 million bill for ANZ to compensate clients of its financial planning business amounts to "a moderate loss", the Hayne Royal Commission heard yesterday. Rowena Orr, counsel assisting, took Kylie Rixon, chief risk officer for Digital and Wealth Australia for ANZ, through a sequences of risk assessments for the advice business beginning in early 2014, the first of which acknowledged "a high residual risk in the business." As the years passed, the risks endured for the bank. "On 1 July 2015, the business risk and compliance committee decided to continue to accept the high risk until 30 June 2016?" Orr asked. "Yes," Rixon said, adding: "there were additional treatment plans that were approved and the risk was accepted." Orr then asked whether, at a meeting of the same committee in June 2016, there was, "again, discussion of acceptance of the risk of delivery of non-compliant advice and breach of ANZ's Australian financial services licence?"  Rixon: "Yes, that's correct." Orr: "Then, in June 2016, [ANZ] again approved the extension of the risk acceptance in relation to delivery of noncompliant advice and breach of financial services licence obligations, extended it to 30 June 2017?" Rixon: "Yes, I see that."Orr: "As the chair of this meeting, did it concern you that this was now the fourth time that the committee had been asked to accept that there was a high risk that customers of ANZ would not be provided with quality advice?" In her response, the ANZ risk officer styled the matter differently. Rixon: "It's the risk that instances of systemic financial advice may result in reportable breaches to the regulator; having intervention by investigations by regulators, [these are] the consequences that were mentioned in relation to financial loss and customer loss.  "It isn't the probability or likelihood of an instance of inappropriate advice," Rixon said. The commission also heard that ANZ has 500 fewer financial advisers under its wing, a decline of more than one third from 1379 advisers ten years ago,  Rixon agreed that the number of salaried advisers at ANZ was down to 277 from 514 in 2008, a loss of 214 advisers. In 2008, ANZ had 865 individual authorised representatives, a number that's fallen to 602 now. Rixon told the commission the bank had "performance managed 71 [salaried] advisers at ANZ Financial Planning over the last 12 months. And over half of them have exited the business through resignation or termination." Touching on the bedrock of the HR issues in the sector, Rixon said: "it is becoming harder and harder to recruit the right people who we think have the right standards and qualifications." Of the decrease in planner numbers at ANZ's aligned dealer groups, Rixon said it was "more difficult to find practices who meet the required ANZ standards." She also cited "what's called tail management, and that involved parting ways, through one way or another, with practices that ANZ felt were not of value or of higher risk to the organisation." Rixon agreed that ANZ had "raised standards and tightened up the on-boarding processes." Asked by counsel assisting Rowena Orr "why have the