Banking Bad

In 2014, Adele Ferguson published a series of investigations that would change Australian financial history. Her reporting into the Commonwealth Bank's financial planning division revealed a systematic culture of misconduct — advisers forging client signatures, churning accounts to generate commissions, and placing clients into high-risk products without their knowledge or consent.

The investigation drew on hundreds of documents, internal bank communications, and interviews with whistleblowers who had risked their careers to speak out. Victims — retirees, small business owners, ordinary families — had lost their life savings to advisers who were rewarded for selling, not for serving.

Ferguson's reporting revealed that the bank's internal compliance systems had failed, that regulators had been slow to act, and that the bank had quietly settled with victims under non-disclosure agreements to keep the scandal out of the public eye.

The series ran across print and television, with Ferguson partnering with ABC's Four Corners to broadcast the findings to a national audience. The public response was overwhelming. Victims came forward in their hundreds. Politicians who had long resisted calls for a royal commission began to waver.

The Commonwealth Bank eventually paid hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. ASIC launched enforcement action. And in 2017, after years of sustained pressure from Ferguson and others, the federal government announced a Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.

The Banking Royal Commission, which ran from 2018 to 2019, confirmed everything Ferguson had reported — and more. Its final report contained 76 recommendations and led to sweeping reforms across the Australian financial sector. Ferguson's book Banking Bad, published in 2019, became a national bestseller — the definitive account of how corporate greed and broken governance failed ordinary Australians.