The corporate watchdog will scrutinise the internal working cultures at financial advice firms in an attempt to stop more customers being "fleeced".
Australian Securities and Investments Commission commissioner Greg Tanzer says poor corporate cultures had contributed to the mis-selling of financial products and bad advice within the financial services sector.
He said it was crucial to clean up cultures within financial advice firms because many of the thousands of people caught up in the recent scandal struggled to recover from losing their savings.
"Sadly those who get fleeced are usually everyday Australians, not wealthy people who can make a major loss and not blink," Mr Tanzer told the Thomson Reuters Australian Regulatory Summit on Wednesday.
"That is, those affected by poor culture are usually those who can least afford it."
Mr Tanzer said the watchdog plans to examine the culture within financial services firms during its regular surveillance reviews.
ASIC would use findings from the reviews to better understand how a firm's culture was driving conduct among workers.
If problems were uncovered, ASIC would alert the company and wider industry.
"Areas we are planning to target are those where poor practices may increase the potential for poor conduct, and therefore increase the risk to trust and confidence," Mr Tanzer said.
In particular, ASIC will scrutinise reward and incentive structures, including promotions, for financial advisors as well as policies covering training and whistleblowers.
How a firm handles complaints and conflicts of interest among staff will also be examined.
Mr Tanzer said the culture of the financial services sector was often driven by incentive and rewards based pay which motivated and reinforced conduct.
He said it was important that bonuses and promotions were linked to good conduct and outcomes for customers.
Mr Tanzer's comments come after the federal government in April said the financial services sector had only a couple of months to address the quality of advice and commissions paid to advisers related to life insurance products.
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