[GRTV] Good conduct and culture drives out the snake oil

In this second interview with Adrian Orr from the Reserve Bank, we talk about life insurance conduct and commissions and some of the things that he'd like to see happen in the industry.
I'd quite like to just switch now to a totally different topic, to life insurance and the conduct review, which you did earlier this year. It's interesting, it seems to me this conduct thing has sort of become a bit of a fad, suddenly, it just has suddenly appeared out of nearly nowhere, and we're hearing about it all the time. Is that a right interpretation?

I think it's correct in terms of if you've been looking at headlines, certainly culture and conduct, but wrong if you think about how we as consumers have confidence and faith in that what we are being delivered is what was on the package. So culture and conduct is a key critical part to having trust in the capital assistant. And the way it's embedded is really through the boards and the senior management of institutions, and that's why we put a lot of emphasis on self-discipline. The companies themselves, the banks, the insurance companies have the disciplines, have the culture that is necessary to take money, someone's money, and to put it into long tail agreements, which are very complex. So try and drive the snake oil out of it and make sure that what you see is there. Culture ...

Is there a lot of snake oil on it though?

Well with the insurance, life insurance area. I mean the banking we didn't find any real sense of widespread misconduct. We did find a real lack of systems in the way of being proactive and making sure that the products and what they're doing are what was written on the packet, and that their staff are incentivized to be selling the right thing to the right people. It was very reactive and piecemeal.
For the insurance companies, the life insurance, it was worse. The whole concept of frameworks, measures, activities for understanding what an appropriate conduct behavior was were absent, largely.