“Australians expect their bank to safeguard their money, and to be alert to anything untoward going on. But too often this isn’t the case,” Mr Wilkie said.
“For instance just last week a couple recounted how they’d had $250,000 stolen by a financial advisor who used the money to gamble. Which of course is terrible in itself. But what was more alarming was that the bank, CommBank, thought nothing unusual in their account holder, on maybe $100,000 a year, having his personal account turn over some $10 million on 52 online gambling sites.
“Last week I also learned of a CommBank low-income customer who’d been loaned money repeatedly, even though it was obvious that the funds were mostly going to gambling companies and payday lenders.
“Good grief, what’s going on here? We know the banks have algorithms to detect and capitalise on just about anything they choose. So either they choose not to identify some suspicious matters, or they do identify such things but then wilfully disregard them. And in any case, they say it’s everyone else’s fault, not theirs. The Commonwealth Bank sure hasn’t been keen to quickly find an acceptable remedy in the cases I’ve cited.
“Well I won’t be a party to that, so expect me to have a lot more to say about such matters during this parliament.”