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This article identifies corporate culture as a key contributor to the sort of egregious corporate misconduct identified in the current Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industries. The authors outline existing strategies for regulating culture in the banking and finance industry and consider the likely outcomes of the Banking Royal Commission. Taking the proposed Banking Executive Accountability Regime as a case study, the authors argue that the industry’s privacy, autonomy and competition concerns, forcefully argued in policymaking circles, may well stymie any proposals that may be put forward, no matter how bad the conduct revealed turns out to be.

ABSTRACTBanks and financial institutions have been excoriated in recent years for having bad firm cultures. However, when faced with the prospect of regulation of the culture of their organisation, banks and financial institutions frequently claim that their internal organisation should be free from outside interference – that they should be autonomous. Government reports echo this claim. This article interrogates it. The article suggests that such claims rest on political liberalism, economic theory or legal impossibility. On examination, none of these bases survives as unassailable although they are conceded to have seized the debate. From this point, the essay moves to consider how the policy debate might be reconceived to make a more sophisticated discussion possible.