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It's been a day of reckoning for Australia's big banks as we close our live coverage of Commissioner Hayne's blunt attack on the dishonesty of the sector's profit-driven culture.
"Whether the conduct is said to have been moved by ‘greed’, ‘avarice’, or ‘the pursuit of profit’, it is conduct that ignored the most basic standards of honesty," Justice Hayne wrote.
The corporate regulator has come in for heavy criticism from Justice Hayne who describes a weak watchdog that is too close to the banking sector and reluctant to act on misbehaviour.
“Entities appear to have treated the law as applying only when and if they chose to obey it,” Commissioner Hayne said.
The banks are squarely in the sights of both the Coalition and Labor in the lead-up to the next election.
Alleging banks and financial service providers had trashed basic standards of honesty and put greed before people, Mr Frydenberg said the report "shined a very bright light on the poor behaviour of our financial sector".
The government has spent months apologising for its near two-year opposition to the royal commission, while Labor rolled out attack ads on Friday, telling voters Prime Minister Scott Morrison blocked the inquiry 26 times before he was forced to retreat in the wake of an internal revolt.
Labor effectively gave Commissioner Hayne carte blanche to rewrite the financial regulation rulebook, vowing on Friday to implement whatever he recommends in his final report if they win government.
"Given what we have seen of the interim report, given the stories that have been told by victims of the financial sector misconduct, we think it's very important to act swiftly and decisively to clean up this industry," Acting Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek said.
Chief executives of some of the country’s biggest banks have vowed that their institutions will change in response to the failings revealed by the Hayne royal commission.
Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn said the lending giant was committed to learning from the failings being highlighted in a “confronting” report from Commissioner Hayne.
“The Royal Commission’s Interim Report released today is confronting and rightly critical of our industry and our bank,” Mr Comyn said in a statement.
The royal commission has slammed the targeting of indigenous Australians.
Evidence on the prevalence of selling funeral insurance to young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people pointed to "predatory" behaviour, Commissioner Hayne said.
While Commissioner Hayne was excoriating the banks for their greed, traders on the ASX were patting them on the back, boosting their share prices.
At market close, CBA was up 1.9 per cent, ANZ up 1.4 per cent, NAB rose a respectable 1.76 per cent and Westpac closed at 1.16 per cent higher.
Ros Waller, a 73-year-old pensioner, who lost her farm after missing a few payments, says royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne "has hit the nail right on the head".
"The old tradition was that the banks were your friend, but not anymore. Now it's all about greed and the basic standards of honesty have gone awry," she says.
Hayne, in his interim report on the banking royal commission handed down on Friday, has highlighted the shortcomings of the regulators, "who have not done anything", says Waller, who spent 34 years as a school teacher and farmer, raising sheep and cattle as well as breeding horses.
Commissioner Hayne says AMP may have deliberately lied to the corporate watchdog in its reporting of a “fees-for-no-service” scandal.
In some of the most explosive testimony given to the commission, AMP executive Anthony "Jack" Regan in April admitted it may have made as many as 20 false and misleading statements to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Commissioner Hayne said he had no reason to doubt this evidence.
“Through AMP’s dealings with ASIC regarding both the extent and nature of its fee for no service reporting, AMP adopted an attitude toward the regulator that appears to me, and at the time appeared to ASIC, not to be forthright and honest,” Hayne writes.
“Indeed, the statements made could be seen as a deliberate attempt to mislead.”
NAB CEO Andrew Thorburn had this to say today:
“I have had the opportunity to read the summary of the Royal Commission interim report and will review the report in more detail over the weekend. I would like to thank the Commissioner for his thoroughness and diligence.
“For us at NAB, where we have made mistakes or done the wrong thing, we will own them and fix them.
“It is difficult to face the statement of ‘profits before people’, but this is exactly what we need to confront. Banking was built on putting people first and earning the trust of customers. We must return to these principles once again, rather than continuing to be short term managers.”
For a man delivering such disturbing news to the Australian people, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg looked quite relaxed on Friday afternoon.
Maybe it was all the footy in the air.
The main take-outs from his press conference was that ASIC had been too willing to negotiate and not keen enough to litigate against banks behaving badly, the regulator can probably have more money, but it will have to ask first.
Oh, and in news that will surprise nobody, if Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne wants to extend his inquiry, he too only has to say the word.