Malcolm Turnbull wants bankers and financial advisers to be forced to give plain language advice to their customers and have their conversations recorded.
The prime minister is angry and disappointed about revelations about banks and financial planners unearthed by the Hayne royal commission, saying there are too many cases where customers were not put first.
As the royal commission was told on Friday that AMP could face criminal charges for lying to the corporate regulator, Mr Turnbull said his government would make sure those responsible were brought to account.
"We will make sure this won't happen again," he told the Weekend West.
Mr Turnbull has told the banks they should change their processes for giving advice to customers, saying disclosure documents were often written "by lawyers, for lawyers" and difficult to understand.
"It's very important that products be explained in plain language and I think that we should, in 2018, be ensuring that that discussion is actually recorded," he said.
If advice was recorded, financial advisers could be held to account if something went wrong.
"If an issue arose, you would be able to see whether the adviser actually did do the right thing or not," the prime minister said.
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Liberal MP Sarah Henderson wants ASIC to be overhauled, after the corporate regulator conceded it negotiated rather than prosecuted misconduct cases and has launched only one criminal case in the past decade.
"ASIC's duty to the Australian people is to be a feared and effective regulator, and on that score it has fundamentally failed," Ms Henderson said on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the pressure on AMP's chair and board has increased after barristers for the banking royal commission suggested Australia's largest wealth manager face criminal charges.
Senior counsel assisting the commission Rowena Orr QC said AMP and its advice businesses misled ASIC 20 times from 2015 to 2017 about the nature and extent of its fees-for-no-service practice.
The fees-for-no-service scandal has already claimed AMP CEO Craig Meller's job and wiped $2.2 billion off AMP's market value during the commission's two-week financial advice hearing.
There is now increasing speculation about the future of AMP chair Catherine Brenner, with the board reportedly preparing to hold a crisis meeting on Sunday.
