One way to get more competition in the financial services industry would be to conduct more frequent reviews of the industry with a focus on competition issues, according to Fred Hilmer, the vice-chancellor of the University of New South Wales.Hilmer, who chaired the National Competition Policy Review Committee in the early 1990s, said that of all the major reviews of the financial system the current inquiry was the first to have competition issues in its terms of reference.Speaking at the Centre for International Finance and Regulation's Financial System Inquiry workshop in Sydney yesterday, Hilmer said the approach to competition issues in the financial services industry was different to any other industry and needed to be better understood.Hilmer said that in most industries the onus was on government to show why there should be regulation."In financial services, with its focus on prudential issues, the onus is on financial services providers to prove regulation can be reduced without an undue increase in risk," he said."Financial services is difficult. A bank failure gives you a different order of magnitude than the closure of a car plant."Competition issues are entwined with stability issues. For example, a change in risk weights changes the competitive balance."If you favour big banks you hurt competition. If you favour small banks you get instability."I think we should look at competition issues as new regulations are proposed. There is a process within government for doing that now but it is not set up to do the work you want to see."Hilmer said that in most industries four large competitors would be "fantastic". But in financial services the big banks are very similar. "It is regulation that leads to those similarities. We need to understand how that works. We need to look at whether technology would change that by providing new platforms"Competition issues in banking would benefit from a more frequent focus on the issue than we have had before."