Speaking "in conversation" mode at the Australian Financial Review Banking and Wealth Summit in Sydney yesterday, Financial Services Inquiry chairman David Murray was clearly looking for further improvement from regulators as well as from the sector more generally.  Murray noted that, as with the previous banking inquiries, trust and confidence were shown to be paramount for the banking system. The nebulous issue of culture, however, is a topic that has been given a lot of airplay at various public discussions in recent times. So it was that Murray was asked for his views on where culture in the banking sector was heading. Murray started with a defining point in his own career in banking - that of taking the Commonwealth Bank from a publicly owned business to a publicly listed, and therefore private, company. It was, he said, one of the biggest changes in organisational culture that could be imagined. The way in which the culture changes  took place there were very deliberate."It has to do with the human systems and the technical systems," he said. "Culture is a group of people who share a common system of beliefs," was how Murray defined the crucial word. Looking back to his time at the Future Fund for another practical illustration, Murray said that "we sat down at the board and agreed on our investment beliefs, this had a very powerful effect of keeping us on track and not getting down [too deeply] into the detail." Murray said running the financial service inquiry showed him that the two main issues were moral hazard risk - where the taxpayer has to step in - and associated with that is the risk of a run on the bank. There is also the issue of information asymmetry. "Most people will not bridge that information gap in their lifetimes which puts us in a position of trust - how do we do that?" he asked.  Murray also pointed out the contradiction between the wish to be seen as an innovative nation while accepting a risk averse corporate culture. It was absolutely impossible to legislate for a "culture breach" - you can't have the same culture for everyone, by definition, he said.