The revelations at the banking royal commission concerning negligent financial advice could have been much worse if the Abbott government had managed to pull off its watering-down of consumer protections.

Under the Labor government's Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms, which came effect from the middle of 2013, most commissions to financial planners were banned and planners had to put their clients’ interest above their own.

In late 2013, the newly elected Abbott government signalled it would amend FOFA. It wanted the requirement for clients to "opt in" to continuing advice every two years scrapped and wanted to remove the requirement for advisers to provide an annual fee disclosure statement to clients they had signed up before July 2013.

After concerns from stakeholders, Mathias Cormann froze the Abbott government's proposed amendments to Labor's financial advice reforms Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

It also wanted to allow bank tellers, planners and call-centre workers who are employees of the banks (and credit unions and building societies, for that matter) to be exempt from the ban on conflicted pay, as long as the advice was general.