Royal Commissioner, IOOF clash over legal privilege
With less than a fortnight to run before the start of the fifth round of hearings for the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, wealth management major IOOF and its subsidiary, Questor Financial Services, have been caught up in a barrage of demands for omitted documents.What had been requested and apparently omitted in its response were bundles of documents, prepared for the consideration by the board of Questor for each meeting of the board held since 1 July 2011. All was on track until about 17 or 18 July, which was the start of a flurry of notes asking for the board's briefing notes (or "Board Pack") for each year back to 2014.Questor, through its lawyers, continued to protest, at one point emailing the commission to explain: "the documents that you have identified in your email below were inadvertently not provided as a result of a technical error." But the documents remained unsent for several more days.Next, Questor requested legal professional privilege over much of the additional material provided - a request Justice Hayne very sharply refused, and exercised his power as a royal commissioner to require production of the complete sets of Board Packs for inspection for the purpose of deciding the legal privilege claims. He rejected many of the claims, and published his reasons earlier this week.What the Commissioner did not explain is why these board papers are of particular interest. One starting point for speculation is that an IOOF whistleblower's allegations of insider trading, cover-ups by senior management and disregard of chinese walls started from about 2015. Successive internal investigations have continually either cleared staff of wrongdoing or meted out minor punishments. There are no indications that these serious allegations were ever escalated to board level.There are some 26 entities slated to appear before commissioner Hayne from Monday 6 August, with IOOF in the middle of the list. The line-up includes the major banks, and several of the largest super funds from a sector that accounts for around A$2 trillion in savings.Also on the list are the regulators ASIC and APRA - presumably to explain how and why the superannuation sector was allowed to become so inefficient, and a poor place to store future retirement funding -along with appearance by consumer advocates (eg, CHOICE); the Finance Sector Union; and, to counter with a business and employers' viewpoint, the Queensland Chamber of Commerce and industry.