NZ's banks told to prove they're not like Australia's

Banks here have been told to prove to authorities they are not behaving like their Australian counterparts who've been caught out ripping off customers. The head of the Financial Markets Authority and the Governor of the Reserve Bank spoke to bank chief executives on Monday about revelations from the Australian royal commission into banking. Among them it emerged AMP charged clients for services they never received and then lied about it to regulators, and the Commonwealth Bank was found to have charged fees to clients after they'd died. Authorities here say they've seen no evidence of similar behaviour but they're not prepared to simply take banks at their word and will step up monitoring. And it's not just the royal commission causing headaches for Australian banks. Yesterday the Commonwealth Bank was told by financial regulators to put aside an extra one billion dollars to cover the potential fallout from its failings. A report from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority slammed the Bank over numerous failings that contributed to tens of thousands of breaches of anti-money laundering and anti terrorism financing laws. The Australian Treasurer and banking regulator Scott Morrison says the report has relevance to the boards of every bank in the country