The CBA's financial advice compensation scheme, set up when the group was under considerable pressure to redress poor financial advice, has been labelled "a joke" by Russell Phillips, a former assessor with the bank's Open Advice Review Program.  Phillips gave evidence yesterday to the Senate inquiry into Scrutiny of Financial Advice, and his comments made under Parliamentary privilege were reported by the ABC, Fairfax Media and other news outlets. The whistleblower, who quit his job at CBA several months ago, said the program was unfair to clients and designed to minimise the compensation paid out to customers.  Phillips said that, unless the signatures on the files were wildly different, they were told to assume they were the same. He said the incentive structure for assessors tied 40 per cent of their pay to timeliness, with each assessor having to complete a file assessment a day. Phillips said at no point were assessors allowed to meet with clients of Commonwealth Bank's authorised financial planners to aid in their reviews of customer files. A spokeswoman for CBA said the bank rejected the allegations and stood by its review program. She said the bank had invited the committee members to view the workings of the program. After running the program for 14 months, the bank has only compensated 19 customers less than half a million dollars - despite receiving over 8000 requests for file reviews from clients.