We're human, so this is how it works.

Things you notice: petrol prices written on large boards next to roads, increases in the price of coffee at your local cafe, the sum total of quarterly electricity bills.

Things you don't notice: massive fees taken out of your superannuation — which you generally can't access until you're 65 — that devalue the nest-egg you'll enjoy in retirement.

If this fortnight has exposed anything, it's that we take superannuation for granted. It's boring, complicated and, for many, years away from being useful.

But taking an hour to examine your superannuation fees and returns, or paying someone qualified to look at it for you, will likely earn you more than you would get from putting in a day at work.

If the first week of these royal commission hearings was dispiriting, the second week was in the realm of galling.

NAB Wealth executive Andrew Hagger was recalled after the bank raised the ire of the royal commission in its preparation. Just 31 documents linked to NAB's fee-for-no-service scandal were submitted by deadline. More than 3,000 were dumped just days before the commission examined the bank.

If it was a strategy, it backfired. NAB was tortured for four days about broad problems in its super business, with Mr Hagger then given almost a full day to explain how the bank deals with regulators.

In particular, Mr Hagger was grilled on whether it misled corporate regulator ASIC about the scale of its fee-for-no-service problem. The regulator was about to publish a report on the scandal that could have taken the shine off the bank's imminent full-year results.

In a contentious phone call with ASIC, Mr Hagger knew, but didn't tell, the bank's exposure was more than three times the $12 million the regulator understood.

NAB then tried to supress parts of an ASIC report. They failed. But you can't blame them, given its title is: Suspected Offending by the NAB Group.

It outlined, back to 2004, "serious and systemic" breaches of criminal sections of the Corporations Act and the ASIC Act. NAB is paying back nearly $90 million to customers who were wrongly charged.

ANZ was involved in a gobsmacking action — getting bank tellers to sell investment products, namely super. Despite the bank's chief risk officer describing the risk as "extreme" and noting it was possible that "regular breaches … would be seen by the regulator as systemic, putting ANZ's licence at risk," they kept doing it.

Bank tellers pushing Smart Choice Super saw ANZ accrue $3.6 billion. The regulator ASIC forced them to stop. The fine? $1.25 million. You do the sums.

Linda Elkins of Commonwealth Bank company Colonial First State also returned. (She was the witness forced to admit "Yes" when asked if CommBank was the "gold medallist of fee-for-no-service").

Again, the bank charged the dead. But this time there was a twist — in 2015 it considered changing the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) to tell live clients they would keep paying for advice — after they died.

Ms Elkins told the commission there had been a change of heart at the bank — fees should not be charged to dead people.

Colonial First State also admitted it broke criminal law 15,000 times because it did not transfer customers to new low-cost, commission-free superannuation accounts called My Super by the legal deadline of January 1, 2014.

This has been an issue for IOOF, NAB and Commonwealth Bank. Despite having years of notice, banks dragged their feet transferring vulnerable accounts.

They all gave different excuses — errors, systems. For customers it meant the same thing — more money gone.

'No-one wants to investigate themselves'

The cliche of "barely scratching the surface" doesn't even fit with summarising the super hearings at #BankingRC. One of Australia's largest funds was specifically excluded.

Army veteran Bradley Campbell is one of 700,000 members who belong to the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation. After his experience, having to take them to Federal Court to get a ruling on his entitlements, he is astonished it has been given a free pass from examination.

"So 10 per cent of the population no longer have that right as every other Australian, to know that their superannuation is being managed in accordance with the law and in a manner that exceeds or is at a level that the public expects?" he asked.

Mr Campbell met Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and asked him, in person, why the royal commission's terms of reference specifically exclude the corporation.

Treasurer Scott Morrison responded for Mr Turnbull. In a letter, he told Mr Campbell "it is a statutory government agency operating under higher standards".

The veteran, and other public servants unhappy with the fund, continue to agitate for it to be examined at the royal commission.

"I'll be bold enough to say it's a government entity — it's like the fox investigating the henhouse massacre!" he said. "No-one wants to investigate themselves."

The commission's public work now takes a break until September 10, when it will examine the insurance industry, with a special focus on the response to four natural disasters.

By September 30, the commission will release its draft recommendations in a report.

Given the tough questions doled out since February, don't expect it to be an easy read.