In August, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the chief executives of Australia's big four banks will appear before the House of Representatives Economics Committee at least once per year.
Labor has dismissed the process as a sham saying it won't get answers to the issues that need to be resolved.
One question that could be asked of Commonwealth Bank CEO Ian Narev is why the bank's insurance division, CommInsure, ignored the findings of police and a coroner and refused a payout for a woman who died of an accidental prescription drug overdose because it decided she'd actually committed suicide.
Peta Outzen took some of her father's medication, the powerful opiate oxycodone, one night in July 2014.
The 40-year-old went to bed and watched a movie and was found dead the next day.
Police and the coroner classified the death as an accidental overdose but CommInsure refused to pay-out on her accidental death policy saying the death was suicide and that was among its policy exclusions.
Peta Outzen's father, John Outzen, has told the A-B-C CommInsure's ruling was devastating.
"Here is this big insurance company, probably the biggest in Australia, to basically overrule the coroner and I thought how can an insurance company overrule someone like a coroner. If they can just cancel Peta like this, they can just cancel anyone."
Cases like this, which have been exposed in recent years by whistleblowers, created the momentum for a Royal Commission into the banking industry.
Labor leader Bill Shorten says the committee hearings are inadequate.
"No soft touch, soft ball white wash in a parliamentary committee is going to stop a royal commission. I've met the victims of the poor standards of the banks and the financial services industry. They will not be denied justice and we will never, never, never give up pushing for a banking royal commission. I think the fact is you can take Malcolm Turnbull out of the investment bank, but you can't seem to take the investment banker out of Malcolm Turnbull."
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the hearings will be very important in terms of accountability.
"This will be the first of what I expect to be many years of the economics committee hearing from the banks. It's not going to be a one-off hearing. It is very important to have a change to the culture of accountability so that appearance before the people's representatives in the people's house in Canberra is part of the calendar. This will be a very important way of ensuring greater accountability."
That sentiment is shared by Liberal M-P David Coleman who told the A-B-C there's a need to promote competition among the banks.
"Obviously, one of the reasons that this inquiry was set up was issues about the banks' failure to pass on Reserve Bank interest rate cuts and that leads to some related questions around competition in the sector and the level of competition and no doubt members will be focusing on questions in that area. I think there are also issues that have arisen recently about the capacity for consumers to get redress when things go wrong in the banking system and some of my colleagues have talked about the idea of a one stop banking tribunal."
But Labor Senator Katy Gallagher told Sky News the process is a sham and won't get to the bottom of the scandals uncovered in recent years.
"It was a process that was initiated by the Prime Minister to try and deflect attention or deflect momentum away from having a Royal Commission when that momentum was building. So, it was never intended to cover the issues that would be covered in a royal commission, it's government controlled, the dates were teed up with the banks before being told to other committee members. I mean this is a sham process from the beginning and it simply won't get to issues that we needA resolved to ensure there's trust and confidence in Australia's financial system."
Commonwealth Bank is the first to appear before the parliamentary committee, and will be followed by Westpac, ANZ and NAB over a three-day period.
