Murray gets amongst the 'citizens'
A band of banking analysts attempted a hijack of the Financial System Inquiry public forum in Sydney last night. Posing as "citizens", CSLA's Brian Johnson, UBS's Jonathon Mott and Morgan Stanley's Richard Wiles peppered Inquiry chairman David Murray with questions about bail-in proposals, the economic cost of additional capital buffers and appropriate tier one capital levels.Murray's general point was that, as an economy dependent on foreign capital, Australia could not ignore rules formulated elsewhere.He said: "If you look at the political response to the crisis, it was that this must not happen again. Regulators were told to do what they must to ensure that outcome."It is very difficult for us to tell the rest of the world that they should use our standards but not use theirs."Murray said the bail-in idea was that, if certain debt holders were at risk of loss in addition to equity holders, then the capital buffer could be extended. He said bail-in debt would not necessarily be converted to equity.His aim was to make it less likely the taxpayer would be "dragged into the next crisis".He also wants a system where it would be unlikely a government guarantee would be called, with the result that "the issue of moral hazard goes away".On the issue of Australia's relatively high tier one capital ratios, Murray said the country's resource based economy made it more volatile and slightly more risky.Once the analysts had been dealt with, the forum heard from a wide range of individuals and representatives of interest groups.• A victim of a New Zealand property spruiker asked why there was not better co-ordination between regulators in the two markets. Murray said there was a New Zealand government representative liaising with the committee and he would raise the matter.• A man with 106,000 signatures on a petition wanted something done about credit card surcharges.• A small business owner, complaining about Commonwealth Bank's behaviour after taking over Bankwest, asked for a review of the way lenders manipulated loan covenants to foreclose on borrowers who were meeting their obligations. Murray said the Inquiry was looking at whether more could be done about the issue of unfair contracts.• Someone wanted the terms of the Financial Claims Scheme to be extended to a wider range of financial institutions, including mortgage trusts. Murray said the matter was on the radar.• Murray dodged a criticism that he had paid a lot of attention to high superannuation fees but not high banking fees.• In response to several questions and comments about consumer protection, Murray said his committee parted company with the Wallis committee, which had proposed that disclosure and transparency were the critical elements. Murray's view is that disclosure is not sufficient protection; he wants to look at the enforcement powers of regulators and at ways to align the interests of product manufacturers and distributors with the interests of consumers.