The Australia Institute welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.

We expect the Royal Commission to be swamped by submissions that relate to specific examples of misconduct. Our submission tries to take a step back and consider the extent to which undesirable outcomes are inevitable in the Australian financial system as it is today being characterised by serious imbalances of power and knowledge between the industry’s institutions and their customers.