Comment: ANZ joins CBA, NAB and Macquarie in the naughty corner

The big banks and other wealth management advisers won't be thanking ANZ for its poorly timed mea culpa over what it characterised as "not delivering all of the Prime Access services we promised..."

While this was a repeat of some facts that already been reported almost a year ago in The Age, the issue was downplayed, and certainly didn't have a $30 million price tag.

In fact, "poorly timed" is an understatement: by the time ANZ's media release hit journalists' intrays yesterday, ASIC's update on its Wealth Management Project (looking at the conduct of the largest financial advice firms) had announced it was "investigating multiple instances of licensees charging clients for financial advice, including annual advice reviews, where the advice was not provided..."

No names named, but ANZ's release joined the dots nicely, and emphasised how much harder it is becoming for the banking sector to run the "few bad apples" argument.

As ABC Radio noted soon after news of ANZ's confession surfaced, pressure had already been growing for a Royal Commission into white collar crime after revelations of unlawful and unethical practices at the Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Macquarie Private Wealth.

And of course, ANZ has set the stage nicely for next Tuesday's Senate Economics References Committee led by Labor's glory-seeking Sam Dastyari, who will be in full attack mode when bank bosses are due to explain this new scandal, along with progress on earlier instances of bad behaviour by their wealth advice arms.

That leaves an open question as to whether ANZ came clean due to ASIC's pending announcement, or whether it was bad timing. Nationals Senator John Williams, another Economics Committee member, has already flagged that as his first question for ANZ's executives next week.

It also leaves another question open to the Senate Committee: how many other wealth managers are subject to ASIC's investigation into a previously unheralded scandal, this time around fee for advice skimming?