Productivity Commission chair Peter Harris yesterday refloated some of the draft findings of his organisation's inquiry into competition in the financial services sector, saying banks had done little to address the "opaque nature of pricing" in the home loan market.In a speech to a Melbourne gathering of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, Harris slammed the banks for keeping borrowers in the dark about the real cost of home loans."In no other industry is the price of a major purchase so apparently shrouded in smoke and shadow, featuring concepts like the standard variable rate, or the comparison rate," he said."The sector has the ability to keep the market fully informed of price differences when they emerge, even if they are only the product of weak competition."Today, we have digital data. It's cheap, it's already assembled inside each financial institution and it's not radical any more to think that such prices can be published to add to consumers' knowledge."Harris said it was absurd that consumers still have to guess at what a competitive rate for a new home loan might be, given that banks had the ability to publish their actual median rates in real time.In an expansive speech, Harris focused most of his attention on remuneration and efficiency issues relating in the mortgage supply chain.In a discussion paper published earlier this month the commission's inquiry has put up proposals that go beyond the mortgage broking reform program recently announced by the Turnbull government.Harris cast doubt on the claims of banks and brokers that the A$2.4 billion in commissions paid for broking services has actually lowered the cost of delivering home loans to Australian borrowers.He said a recent effort by the Commission to examine the impact of payments to brokers on the overall cost of supplying home loans was made "near impossible" because of insufficient data provided by banks."For smaller banks, we were able to develop some estimates of the branch costs they would potentially face, without broker assistance," he said."But we received insufficient information from most, not all, banks, and so could not create a clear picture."Thus we can't say whether there has been a net improvement in efficiency, even as a large sum in commissions has been added to industry costs."Harris indicated there was evidence that bank-owned broker networks were generating disproportionately high sales volumes for their owners."Consequent or not, in-house products appear to dominate disproportionately the outcomes for borrowers who use bank-owned aggregators," he said."In 2015, the Commonwealth Bank had 21 per cent overall market share in the broker channel but a 37 per cent market share via its aggregator, Aussie Home Loans."Harris said commissions earned by brokers remained far from aligned with the interests of customers.He questioned the motives behind trailing commissions, which the industry argues reduce churn and manage customers on behalf of banks."We do actually understand quite well why it might be in a bank's interest and a broker's interest to jointly limit churn," he said."But not the customer's interest - who is most