At yesterday's sitting of the royal commission into banking misconduct, Australian Bankers Association CEO Anna Bligh was asked her views on work done by Phil Khoury in redrafting the banking Code of Practice. Khoury's suggestions and changes were handed to the ABA in December 2017, about half a year after Bligh took over from Steven Munchenberg. Topping the list of points to be covered by Michael Hodge, senior counsel assisting the commission, was how to define small businesses - notably, the threshold that must be met for small businesses to gain the protections and entitlements of a new section of the code, particularly in relation to simpler standard contracts and the use or otherwise of certain non-monetary defaults.  There has been - and remains - an ongoing disagreement between the ABA and the banks on one side, and small business advocates on the other. Khoury recommended the limit be A$5 million, although the major banks used $3 million for a myriad of reasons. In his questioning, Hodge was unable to shift Bligh from the view that a lower limit was better for competition - that is, fewer lenders would have a loan book so fully extended that they would not be able to offer further unsecured loans. Bligh was determined to conflate a bank's ability to lend with potential to lend, along the way blurring the distinctions between how a small business should be defined with how much a small business usually borrowed, and whether or not the advantage in risk weighting that the major banks, Macquarie and ING gained from accreditation, versus standard risk weightings. Along the way, in a roundabout sequence of questioning, Bligh also conceded that the new ABA code of banking practice would not require compensation to be made for any direct financial loss or damage caused to an individual by a breach of the code, or make non-monetary orders obliging the subscriber to take a particular course of action to resolve the breach. Bligh also confirmed that approval of the code by ASIC remained a priority for the ABA, and that arguments around the sticking point of $5 million versus $3 million in loans as the cut-off point has been escalated to the chair of ASIC. This round of royal commission hearings concludes today. The schedule of witnesses for this morning features Michael Saadat and Tim Mullaly from ASIC. They will most likely round out the week, and this segment of financial services. The next round of hearings - round four - will be run under the banner of "Experiences with financial services entities in remote and regional communities", and held in two locations: Â·         Brisbane:             Monday, 25 June - Friday, 29 June 2018·         Darwin:                Monday, 2 July -  Friday, 6 July 2018