PM non-committal on ASIC royal comm calls

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is non-committal over calls for a royal commission into the Commonwealth Bank advisers who lost clients' money through dishonest practices.

Mr Abbott said the government will "carefully consider" a parliamentary committee report that recommends a royal commission.

"Obviously some terrible things happened and it's good that the parliamentary inquiry into this has been able to expose some of the problems," he told reporters in Sydney on Friday.

But the government will await its own inquiry into the financial system before taking further action.

"We want to get to the bottom of these things and we want to ensure that investors are as safe as they can be in a market economy."

The report has called for a broader inquiry into the corporate regulator's slow response to bank whistleblowers who alerted it to suspect conduct by financial advisers.

The Commonwealth Financial Planning Limited (CFPL) advisers are accused of forging client signatures to facilitate profit-producing product switches between 2006 and 2010.