October 4, 2016

Four key questions MPs should ask the big banks (and the big banks should answer)

The bosses of the four major banks will appear before Federal Parliament's House of Representatives Economics Committee this week, starting with Commonwealth Bank CEO Ian Narev.

Here are four of the key questions bank customers need answered.

1. What are the incentives your bank offers branch staff for selling various products?

This is question number one for a very good reason - most experts agree that incentives which are misaligned with customers' interests are the root cause of banking bad behaviour.

Bank shareholders want perpetual profit growth and the executives are paid big bonuses to grow earnings.

There are two main ways to achieve it - sell more product or make bigger profit margins from existing product.

The big four banks have been doing both, and both are bad for customers.

More competition can help with the first problem, but it can actually make the second issue worse.

Banks pay their branch staff bonuses or commissions for selling product (loans, credit cards, insurance and investment products) or make such selling a key performance indicator (KPI) for promotions, or even just keeping their jobs.

The Finance Sector Union recently conducted a survey showing the devastating impact this sales pressure is having on many bank staff.

Australia is a small market, and household debt levels are at record highs

So if bank staff are trying to increase the amount of loans and credit cards they sell to customers then it is increasingly likely they are selling these products to the wrong people who can't afford them.

Likewise, the superannuation, insurance and investment products being pushed by bank staff under incentives are not always in their customers' best interests - a prime example is Storm Financial.

Not only that, but managers and staff can also be subject to targets around payouts on products such as insurance, which could go a long way to explaining the ongoing CommInsure scandal.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren recently hammered the Wells Fargo CEO over incentives for branch staff to "cross-sell" inappropriate products. Will Australia's MPs follow her example?

2. Is your bank still making unsolicited loan/credit offers?

Laws that came into force on July 1, 2012 now prevent banks from making unsolicited offers to increase credit card limits, unless they have the customer's prior consent.

However, it seems banks have found a few loopholes to dodge this restriction.

Many aggressively promote the option for customers to give a blanket consent, with GE Capital actually fined for misleading representations to this end.

Others simply offer their existing customers a new card with a higher limit - something not prevented by the law.

It also appears that many are now offering personal loans instead of credit limit increases

All these unsolicited offers tempt people who may already have too much debt to take out more.

While there is personal responsibility not to borrow more than they can afford to repay, such temptation wrapped up in marketing designed to play on consumer psychology can prove too much for many, leading to some outrageous credit card and personal lending.

3. We have noticed a rise in personal loan arrears at the same time as debt consolidation is growing, are they related?

The latest profit updates from the major banks all revealed a rising trend in personal loan bad debts.

While the banks say the rise in bad debts is stemming from the depressed mining regions of Western Australia and Queensland, the ABC has also noted a steep rise in debt consolidation loans.

These are generally issued so that customers can pay off credit card debts and consolidate their debts in a lower interest rate personal loan.

However, while useful for many customers, if the credit card debts are very large they may be unsustainable for the customer to repay even if consolidated at a lower interest rate.

The issuing of new personal debt consolidation loans could explain why bad credit card debts are stable and credit card balances accruing interest are falling but bad personal debts are rising.

In other words, the debt problem is being shifted, not solved

IFM Investors chief economist Alex Joiner thinks this might be what's happening.

"I would think that the banks have been pushing this as a product or similar, or that there is an increasing amount of distress amongst some households pushing them towards these products," he told ABC __news Online.

Academic and former financial counsellor Gregory Mowle said this issue relates back to the incentives discussed in question one.

"It's a real conflict of interest, because the staff in those branches are on a commission scheme, they get a bonus, they have targets for the amount of loans they need to be writing for each month," he said.

4. Why are interest rates cuts not being passed on in full at the same time bank fees are going up?

This question goes to the heart of the lack of competition in Australia's banking system, where the big four control more than 80 per cent of the mortgage market.

Unlike the period immediately after the financial crisis when the major banks could legitimately claim to have much higher funding costs - as Westpac explained in its infamous banana smoothie video - global markets are relatively calm now.

In fact, official interest rates in Australia and most other developed economies are at record lows, and investors are actually seeking out highly rated investments (like our major banks' bonds) as safe places to park their money while achieving some kind of return.

So why did the majors pass on only half of the latest RBA interest rate cut?

Not only that, but why have bank fees grown to nearly $12.5 billion?

Consumer group Choice thinks it already knows the answer.

"This adds up to a simple conclusion – banks aren't competing on fees and product costs," said its CEO Alan Kirkland.

Interesting to see what answer the bank bosses come up with.

No comments:

Post a Comment