Dissembling CBA pleads incompetence over fee for no service
CBA's financial advice businesses may have habitually charged clients for services that were not being provided, but its executives had no capacity to ensure that contracted services were being delivered to clients, the Royal commission has been told.Day three, Round 2 of the royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry saw John Keating, head of platform products at AMP, in the witness box, followed by CBA in the second case study on platform fees.However, it was during the second half of the day, when senior counsel assisting the commission, Michael Hodge, keen to continue his pursuit of yesterday's case study, dealing with fees for no service, was able to quiz CBA's witness. One inescapable fact to emerge was that, as at 31 December 2017, the CBA had paid out or offered approximately A$118.5 million of refunds, including interest, to customers who had been victims of these issues.After extracting some of the most damning evidence of the Royal Commission to date from AMP executives the previous day, Hodge started d Marianne Perkovic, executive general manager and a director of Commonwealth Private, on CBA's processes for charging clients to access products via its platforms.Perkovic had been with Count, but moved to CBA about two years before Count was acquired and became a subsidiary of the bank, and so appeared to be well placed to discuss the bank's approach across all its major wealth and financial advice businesses.She was also asked to explain the problems with BankWest Financial Advice and Commonwealth Financial Planning, where there were three main problems with the way each dealt with their clients, as the emphasis and fallout seemed to differ.There was an overcharging of ongoing service fees. "We found that and remediated that," said Perkovic. "The second issue was actually in relation to what we call 'orphan clients'. These clients are clients that actually aren't allocated to a financial planner, and we found occasions where advisers weren't allocated in appropriate time to actually deliver the ongoing service. "And the third instance was where delivery of the service was not provided, or we couldn't find record of that delivery."Perkovic was quizzed extensively on what she knew about all three items, when, and how she found out - or why she didn't - by Michael Hodge, senior counsel assisting the commission, over all three, but in particular the last item.As has been seen with other witnesses, Commissioner Kenneth Hayne and his counsel are in no mood to accept evasive answers nor not let witnesses take refuge behind obtuse management speak. Long-winded answers by Perkovic, as she asked to be allowed "to give context" to questions that seemed to require a "yes" or "no" response eventually wore too thin.Commissioner Hayne: "Ms Perkovic, I have hesitated to interrupt you, I will interrupt once. You will get on better if you listen to counsel's question - if you have to stop and think about the question do it - but listen to counsel's question and answer what you're