“Since Justice Hayne handed down his recommendations, the public focus has been on punishment to bankers and the potential for legislative change – but what about all the victims? Banks can’t expect to say sorry and then dust their hands. If they are serious about making people whole, then they need to bring in an independent structure,” he said.

“If there is one thing the royal commission has demonstrated, it is that the power imbalance between customer and bank is too wide. You can’t rely on that power dynamic to deliver justice in the form of fair remediation.”

Such structured mediation processes should involve a “qualified, independent third party being engaged by the banks to help aggrieved customers understand what happened to their money, what their rights are, and what a just way forward would entail,” the firm posited.

With said mediation, Mr Somerville warned, the flow of class actions against the big banks would be “relentless”.

“Class actions are obviously a model we are extremely comfortable with and they do deliver justice, but it can be a lengthy process. It would be preferable for all concerned if the banks took a more proactive approach, as without just remediation, the flow of class actions would likely be relentless,” he said.

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“We will be engaging with the banks and encouraging them to embrace this model, which has worked well both here and overseas.”