Bank staff pushing investments, insurance

The Financial Markets Authority has released its review of bank incentive structures. It found bank staff earned $17 million in incentives across the nine banks in the year to March, about 9 per cent of their total pay.

Director of regulation Liam Mason said, after putting the focus on advisers for some time, it “only fair” to look at what was happening with banks.

The review found incentive structures were not well-managed.

Incentive schemes were highly sales-focused, controls seemed to be ineffective at mitigating conduct risks, boards and senior management received little information on the conduct risks associated with incentives and, while banks were making significant changes to their schemes, they did not go far enough.