Naked Among Cannibals

An insider's story of how Australian banks have lost the trust and respect of their customers by relentlessly pursuing profits.

Australian banks are riding high. Shareholder profits are at record levels. Senior executives are on champagne salaries and business has never been so good.

But in the suburbs and in the bush, hundreds of branches have closed, many thousands of jobs have been lost and millions of customers are disillusioned, all in the name of banking reform.

This is the story of one bank, the State Bank of New South Wales, and its sale to the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society. But it is a tale that is universal. It is about corporate greed in the banking industry, transfer pricing, funny money, policy making unashamedly calculated to maximise profits, speculation and manipulation, boardroom powerplays, and contentious practices designed to hold bank customers captive. And it is about the mating calls between banks and fees, fees and still more fees.

Our worst suspicions are confirmed. We are all naked among the cannibals that are the Australian banks.