I have copied the abstract of this paper below. In a nutshell it says that financial misconduct of advisors does have a cost. However, the cost is not as severe as you think since advisors are able to find employment at other firms after being disciplined. The downside of this for the consumer is that sooner or later you will run into one of the cheating bastards that were dismissed from the Commonwealth Bank
This is actually quote a novel little paper.
We construct a novel database containing the universe of financial advisers in the United States from 2005 to 2015, representing approximately 10% of employment of the finance and insurance sector. Roughly 7% of advisers have misconduct records. Prior offenders are five times as likely to engage in new misconduct as the average financial adviser. Firms discipline misconduct: approximately half of financial advisers lose their job after misconduct. The labor market partially undoes firm-level discipline: of these advisers, 44% are reemployed in the financial services industry within a year. Reemployment is not costless. Following misconduct, advisers face longer unemployment spells, and move to less reputable firms, with a 10% reduction in compensation. Additionally, firms that hire these advisers also have higher rates of prior misconduct themselves. We find similar results for advisers of dissolved firms, in which all advisers are forced to find new employment independent of past misconduct or performance. Firms that persistently engage in misconduct coexist with firms that have clean records. We show that differences in consumer sophistication may be partially responsible for this phenomenon: misconduct is concentrated in firms with retail customers and in counties with low education, elderly populations, and high incomes. Our findings suggest that some firms “specialize” in misconduct and cater to unsophisticated consumers, while others use their reputation to attract sophisticated consumers.
More here – The National Bureau For Economic Research
Note though that the CBA seems to only have sacked the ones that were caught. Sounds like Comminsure may have a few too and it’s probably just part of the culture of the bank
The thing I always found interesting when working in finance was that the old saying that a fish rots from the head down was very appropriate.