Of all the consumer problems we take on at CHOICE, there's one that just won't go away. Bad financial advice.

We started investigating in 1987, having noticed a dramatic expansion of the industry. What we found was alarming.

Repeated mystery shopping exercises in 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2003 found ongoing evidence of poor advice.

Despite this evidence, we had to wait until the scandals that accompanied the global financial crisis before there was enough political will to take on the industry.

5 tips for finding a financial adviser 1. One size doesn't fit all, so shop around to find a planner that's right for you. Make sure they really have expertise in the area in which they're offering advice. 2. Ensure the planner is licensed to provide advice or is the authorised representative of a financial services licence holder. All licence holders have to register with ASIC. 3. Ask the planner for full disclosure about which financial institutions they have a financial relationship with, if any. 4. Ask for an explanation of why the adviser is recommending products they receive a commission on. They may still be valid recommendations, but the adviser should be able to explain why the advice suits you. 5. Make sure to get an annual statement outlining the advice you've received, why it was given and how much it costs if you're charged on an ongoing basis instead of a fee for service.

Along the way, more than 120,000 Australians lost billions in savings through scandals involving Opes Prime, Storm Financial, Timbercorp, Bridgecorp, Fincorp, Trio, Westpoint and Commonwealth Financial Planning.

This led the then government to announce the Future of Financial Advice reforms in 2010.

These put in place basic protections that most people probably assumed already existed — like the requirement that advisers act in their clients' best interests.

Importantly, they also banned most forms of conflicted remuneration — the sales incentives that had encouraged advisers to push the investment options that paid the highest commissions.

Banks said 'trust us', and Parliament did

But the advice industry and big banks fought back, arguing for carve outs. This saw commissions on existing advice arrangements "grandfathered", so advisers could continue to pocket tainted money.

Entire categories of commissions — like those on life insurance and consumer credit insurance — were also exempted.

The banks and advice industry said "trust us". And the Parliament did. But now it is patently clear that this trust was undeserved.

Because once the laws that these firms had resisted came into effect, they defied them, often with explicit endorsement of senior management.

ASIC investigations have continued to find evidence of serious problems in the industry over the past five years.

Some of these involve consumers being charged for advice that was never provided, with an estimated 306,000 people so far being charged $216 million in unjustifiable fees.

Others reveal persistent problems with the quality of advice, with ASIC's most recent report finding only 25 per cent of people received advice that complied with the law.

We're happy to see the Financial Services Royal Commission turn its blistering gaze onto these problems, but there's a strong sense of deja vu to it all.

Conflicted remuneration, vertically integrated models that favour the banks that own them, and advisers with inadequate qualifications are problems that we have been finding in our investigations since 1987. And changes to the law have failed to fix them.

Senior execs must be held to account

This time it will take much deeper, stronger reform.

The days of letting the industry say "trust us and we'll fix it" have got to end. We've got to give ASIC stronger powers to intervene fast when it detects problems, with the ability to direct how firms respond. We've got to make sure that consumers are compensated where they lose savings as the result of poor advice. And we've got to finish the job on conflicted remuneration.

As the royal commission's earlier hearings on mortgage brokers have illustrated, when advisers are paid based on the volume of financial products they push it is bad for consumers.

And as this week's hearings have shown us, you've got to address remuneration the whole way through the line of management.

Because if senior executives are still being rewarded for the volume of product their firm pushes, the interests of shareholders will always trump those of customers.

The industry says it wants to rebuild consumer trust but the test will be in whether this time it's willing to embrace true reform, rather than resisting it.

Alan Kirkland is the chief executive of consumer advocacy CHOICE.