Former CBA employee Jeff Morris spoke at the Financial Planning Association (FPA) Congress in Adelaide on Friday.
Mr Morris was joined by Rockwell Olivier head of personal legal services Peter Bobbin in a discussion moderated by FPA chief executive Mark Rantall.
Mr Morris went public with allegations about CBA financial planner fraud and ASIC inaction on the matter in June 2013.
“What we need to get to is a situation where everybody is liable and accountable because there’s a mechanism whereby people can blow the whistle and be certain it will be acted upon,” he said.
The whistleblower must also be certain the perpetrator will be “heavily punished”, said Mr Morris.
“We certainly don’t have any of those elements in place at the moment as regards to ASIC,” he said.
In the wake of a damning senate report into ASIC’s performance, the regulator has unveiled new whistleblowing policies, but Mr Morris was sceptical “given [his] experience”.
“I couldn’t recommend to anyone to be a whistleblower to ASIC with the current regime in place,” he said.
“There isn’t a tough enough penalty regime in place … [and there is no] effective protection [provided by] ASIC whatsoever,” Mr Morris said.
Mr Bobbin said there are three levels of whistleblower regimes in place in Australia at the moment: the legal/ASIC system that Mr Morris has been through; the FPA Confidential service (which is managed independently by Deloitte); and organisations’ internal processes.
“Having a whistleblowing culture within the organisation can save an organisation from collapse and destruction,” Mr Bobbin said.
Mr Morris said it makes “eminent sense” from an organisational point of view to have a strong whistleblower policy in place.
“I blew the whistle internally [at CBA] as well as externally. And that was back in June 2009,” he said.
“At that stage, if my action/inclination had been acted upon, imagine how much better off the organisation would have been.
“I don’t think you can afford not to take this seriously, because the long-term cost is a lot higher,” he said.
But despite his frustrating experience with the regulator and the CBA, Mr Morris is optimistic about the direction of the financial planning sector.
“It has been a bit of a catalyst, and I think it’s brought a lot of things to a head,” he said.
“I’m actually now seized with a real sense of optimism because I think this is the point we move forward from,” Mr Morris said.
