Code Of Conduct For Commonwealth Bank
Code of conduct refers to the formulated rules and guidelines that depicts what is good and bad behavior in the society. The code of conduct is a necessity for all the organizations to guide the relationship between the business enterprise and the consumers (Adams et al., 2017). The code of conduct and ethics for the common wealth bank outline the policies and principles that govern its operations. According to Bedi (2015), Common wealth bank expects its stake holders to comply with the outlined code of conduct and ethics for the satisfaction of both the bank and the customer.
According to Anderson (2016) the code of conduct for Common Wealth Bank broadly outlines the guidance for professional dealings during operations in the headings below together with various violations of the code of conduct and the governance issues that need to be addressed.
Common Wealth Bank values the work environment that appreciates employee diversity which makes the employees to feel valued and respected in the organization which is a crucial aspect that enhances employee performance within the organization (Free, 2015). Any form of discrimination which ranges from sexual harassment, intimidation; committed against a co-worker, supervisor, vendor, visitor or a customer is highly prohibited. The Common Wealth Bank has recently been sued by a blind woman Miss Mattiazzo over its EFTPOS machines which are used to make payments for various services (Howell, 2015). These machines are entirely touch screen with no tactile pads for visually impaired persons who can’t operate the machine. In most cases the blind woman has been forced to share her pin with the cashiers who then process payment on her behalf breaching the terms and conditions of her contract with the bank which emphasizes on pin secrecy. This leaves her with the question of whether she can trust a stranger with her bank pin hence her action of suing the bank for discrimination against the visually impaired through those machines.
Comminsure an insurance company a branch of the Common Wealth Bank of Australia discriminated against its own employees. According to its policy, an employee who suffers ill- health while working has to be compensated but this was not the case for various employees such as Martha and Mathew. Martha was forced to retire at the age of 35 when she developed a spinal cord problem which was associated with her job’s condition for sitting for long hours and yet she was fit for any other job in the organization that does not involve long sitting hours. This is after she requested for compensation from the company. Mathew was sacked in 2011 due to ill health when he had been awarded an employee of the year in 2010 and yet he was fit for some other tasks within the company. The company claimed that he could no longer work because he was unfit for work (Du Plessis, Hargovan and Harris, 2018).
Discrimination and Harassment
Discrimination of individuals based on their: religion, gender, race, nationality, age, physical disability, sexual orientation , marital status and socioeconomic status is completely against the bank’s mission to enhance respectful and dignified work place for all the employees and customers. This is violated when John Marshall the former Head of finance and operations a senior British banker who is 60 years old was fired by the bank over redundancy claims and replaced by Debbie Lotz who is 47 years old(Hamilton, 2017). This is age discrimination which is not acceptable code of conduct in any organization. John believes that the woman was favored by the fact of been a n Australian and John terminated for been a British which was race discrimination conduct by the bank which was a violation of the code of conduct by the bank (McDermott, 2018). The bank favored Australian staff over the Britons. The banker also believes that he was discriminated on sexual basis by replacing him with a woman which is a violation of the code of conduct by the bank (Thornton, 2015).
At Common Wealth Bank we value honesty and transparency in our dealings with the customers to ensure their satisfaction. Any fraudulent behavior will automatically lead to job loss for the employee and further legal action against the employee. If the customer engages in fraudulent behavior, his account with the bank is hold and legal action is taken against the person. The Common Wealth Bank has violated this code of conduct due to the issue that has arisen recently where it has admitted the act of manipulating thousands accounts of children fraudulently in order to earn bonuses and meet various set targets. This was done by the staff at the retail branch and the CBA chief Executive Officer Matt Comyn apologized for the breach of trust act of the bank to enhance good public image of the Bank. He said that some of the employees activated youth saver accounts using their own funds and further more kept the account active with small deposits hence improving their incentive compensation (Taylor, ed., 2017). This act was never harmed any person but it was a breach of trust which is against the code of conduct.
Comminsure is a branch of CBAwhich offers life insurance for Australian’s and other people. The company has been a talk in the media from the way it handles its clients. Its egocentric nature leave the devastated clients distressed with their families (McConnell, 2016). The company has been reported to engage in dishonest activities like hiding the clients’ files during claims so as to avoid compensating them which is a violation of the code of conduct that emphasizes on honesty in the company in the course of operations
Dishonesty and fraudulent behavior
This refers to the process of taking advantage of a person’s circumstance for your personal benefit. We prohibit exploitation of our customers so as to foster a god relationship for the continuous usage of our services by the customers. Comminsure an insurance company and a branch of CBA is reported to engage in various unethical practices in order to maximize the profits which is a violation of code of conduct and ethics which emphasizes on transparency in all the dealings with the innocent clients. The company is associated with deceitful practices such as misusing of medical reports as well deleting the files and pressuring the doctors to change their opinions so that the clients’ claims can be rejected which is a violation of the code of conduct as stipulated by the company due to lack of evidence by the clients. The company failed to compensate some of the clients who paid premiums for life insurance giving false allegations such as violation of the principle of utmost good faith after alteration of the clients’ records in order to avoid compensating the clients (Tarr, Van Akkeren and Shibl, 2017). The claim assessors went to the medical team requesting them to alter the opinions regarding James Kassel’s claim so as to obtain more favorable opinion from other sources to avoid compensating him. The company also requested the doctors to change the reports to suit their own need which is enforcement as the doctors had to do that against their own wish.
Some of the people in the company hacked the system hence manipulating the crucial information pertaining the clients which is an in fraudulent behavior that needs to be seriously addressed. The company made some poor financial decisions regarding compensation.
This is evident where James Kassel was compensated $25000 when he suffered from a heart attack which was not sufficient since he required $300,000 for treatment; hence the company was not considerate for its customers and never gave the customers’ interests first priority. The company never protected the whistle blowers according to the code of conduct. Matthews(2016 ) states that this is evident where DR Koh whistle blew the company’s behavior of forcing doctors to give false opinions regarding the clients’ health status so as to reject their claims as in the case of Nicholas Bishop who had taken a life insurance because of his lung problem but later developed a lung virus which deteriorated his health and the company failed to compensate him claiming that he never stated that he had a lung virus during the enforcement of the insurance contract and concluded that he had violated the insurance principle of utmost good faith which requires the insured to give all the relevant facts about the issue being insured against .DR Koh was sacked by the company after that which was a violation of the code of conduct.
Exploitation
Any form of corruption such as free gifts in exchange for a favor from a customer or employee of the bank is punishable by law (Tiffen, 2017). Money laundering is also a form of corruption and should be avoided. The Common Wealth Bank has recently slashed the executive pay by $44 million in response to a regulatory inquiry by the Australian Banking sector. This is after the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority had to review the CBA bank’s governance and cultural issues after the Bank Was sued by the Australia’s financial intelligence agency as a result of frequent breaches of laws in relation to money laundering activities (Pearson, 2016). Money laundering is a violation of the code of conduct and must be dealt with immediate effect by the management (Solaiman, 2018).
People should be ready to speak out when there is a concern regarding various issues within the company. The company has the mandate to ensure that people are not harassed after whistle blowing because there concern might have an important impact on the current mode of operations. This can be achieved through hiding their identity but is in contrary to how the company dealt with Jeff Morrison. Corruption had prevailed at the Common Wealth Bank of Australia. Jeff Morris who was working as a financial planner at the bank in Sydney was not happy with what he saw since all the levels of management had been affected by corruption (Rao, 2015). The widows and orphans were violated with some of the Bank’s plans and a crooked management team covered up everything. There was a case where two retirees saw Jeff Morris over an issue where a half a million dollars of their pension had been swallowed mysteriously. They never got a clear feedback from anyone in the management concerning their funds since they were pissed off by the relevant authority who would have explained to them. Morris and the two other employees blew the whistle regarding these malpractices in the Bank (Brown and Lawrence, 2017).They send a series of accusations through fax to the financial regulator, ASIC, but the organization never took any action on the same over many years. Jeff Morris had no other alternative but resigning and going to the public with the corruption allegations through the media like ABC TV (Cox, 2016). His exposure of the corrupt practices at the Common Wealth Bank resulted to an inquiry of the parliament on the same issue and finally the royal commission chipped in. The consequences for whistle blowing action were heavy for Jeff Morris. He received various life threats. His wife never supported him and saw him as a snitch. Jeff Morris suggests that in addition to the royal commission, the government should also strengthen a legislative protection for whistle blowers so as to enable disclosure of any misconduct in organizations in future without fear(Beck and Paton, 2018)
This is the process of compelling people to comply with the stipulated rules and regulations willingly or unwillingly. Our code of conduct gives the employees and the customers a free will to choose what is best for them. Comminsure an insurance company and a branch of the CBA has also been said to force doctors to give false opinions regarding the status of the patients. The CEO Ian Renev acknowledges all the allegations and promise for further investigation through an interview at ABC TV.
Conclusion
The code of conduct is very essential for Common Wealth Bank of Australia to enhance good corporate image to the outside world to attract more customers for its continuous success. The managers and chief executives should ensure that the code of conduct formulated in the organization is adhered to by all the staff members in the daily operations for the achievement of the vision and mission.
References
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Adams, M., Borsellino, G., McCalman, J. and Young, A., 2017. Australia’s proposed Banking Executive Accountability Regime: regulatory panopticon or fail-safe. Governance Directions, (9), pp.528-531.
Bedi, R., 2015. Banking law in Australia [Book Review]. Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (235), p.44.
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Brown, A.J. and Lawrence, S.A., 2017. STRENGTH OF ORGANISATIONAL WHISTLEBLOWING PROCESSES–ANALYSIS FROM AUSTRALIA, 60(4), .p.250
Cox, M., 2016. Blurring the boundary between work and play: Disciplining employee conduct in social media and out of hours. Brief, 43(11), p.28.
Du Plessis, J.J., Hargovan, A. and Harris, J., 2018. Principles of contemporary corporate governance. Cambridge University Press.
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McConnell, P., 2016. CommInsure case shows it’s time to target reckless misconduct in banking’. The Conversation, 8.
Matthews, A., 2016. The financial services industry: Whistleblowing and calls for a royal commission. Precedent (Sydney, NSW), (136), p.35.
McDermott, T., 2018. The collective dimension of federal anti-discrimination proceedings in Australia: Shifting the burden from individual litigants. International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 18(1), pp.22-39.
Pearson, G., 2016. Failure in corporate governance: financial planning and greed. Handbook on Corporate Governance in Financial Institutions, p.185.
Rao, G.U., 2015. ENHANCING THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN PREVENTING CORRUPTION: THE NEED FOR PROTECTING WHISTLE BLOWERS. Editorial Board, 4(4), p.55.
Thornton, M., 2015. The Political Contingency of Sex Discrimination Legislation: The Case of Australia.
Taylor, C.A. ed., 2017. The Ethics of WikiLeaks. Green haven Publishing LLC.
Tarr, J.A., Van Akkeren, J. and Shibl, R., 2017. Financial advisors–new remuneration constraints and competency requirements. Company and Securities Journal.
Tiffen, N., 2017. Is it as simple as ABC? a practitioner’s perspective on anti-bribery compliance. In The Changing Face of Corruption in the Asia Pacific (pp. 313-326).
Solaiman, S.M., 2018. ‘Captured by evils’-Combating black money, corruption and money laundering in Bangladesh: the dog must bark to keep predators away. Journal of Money Laundering Control, (just-accepted), pp.235.
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