Welcome to the first issue of The Pensky File. A irregular, unfactual, and biased news service.
Australian Banking's Golden Years
By Waffling Pinkerton-Smythe, Financial Services Editor
ANZ’s Shayne Elliott recently foreshadowed that the glorious 20-year golden period for the esteemed banking industry in Australia was coming to an end. Clearly, there are are a few minor issues like the Banking Royal Commission to navigate. But these are short-term problems and soon enough things will be back to normal.
Head of Customer Uniformity Normalisation & Transitioning at one of the major banks, Hider Salami believes that the future of Banking is quite bright. "We see a return to normal in the very near future, with customers feeling little to no impact of the Royal Commission on their day-to-day use of financial institutions like ourselves," Mr. Salami said. He went on to say that "customers across all banks should expect to see a return to expected norms once the Royal Commission hands down its findings and the political situation in Canberra calms down. Mr. Salami confirmed that customers shouldn't worry about the practices at their bank changing in the long term.
Some industry analysts and consumer groups have said that the comments made by Mr. Salami show that the banking industry is failing to grasp the seriousness of the problem and community outrage. Rusty Shank from the Banking Industry Group believes that this is a minority view being driven by special interest groups. "These so-called community expectations are out of touch with reality and the law of the land," Mr. Shank said. "We have more legislation and regulation than any other industry and our members are focused on adhering to those requirements" he added.
When you look at the volume of what is coming out of the Royal Commission and recent regulatory reports, it's easy to get lost in the detail and suggest that perfectly legal behaviour should be compared after the fact with some sort of sudo-moral-code-of-ethics. Our banks are as strong as they are today because they act legally and we should be thankful for that. And with that in mind, it's easy to say that the golden era of Australian banking has many years left to run.
