Banks targeted by the country's securities regulator for legal proceedings have lashed out on the agency, claiming that the lawsuits are unwarranted since their actions on the Storm Financial issue were merely procedural.

Bank of Queensland (BOQ), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Macquarie Bank all facilitated loans to clients affected by the Storm Financial collapse in March 2009 and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) formally announced on Wednesday that lawsuits against the three banks would proceed as planned.

The announcement was made following months of waiting on the part of ASIC, which had hoped for a commercial resolution on the matter but overtures made by the banks proved insufficient for Storm investors to recoup their losses, according to ASIC.

BOQ managing director David Liddy insisted that his bank had acted accordingly during the clients' application for loans as he reminded ASIC that "we never provided margin loans, never promoted Storm Financial products, never managed geared equities and never took any commission from Storm."

Liddy stressed that BOQ merely provided home equity loans to its customers seeking to utilise their properties for investment intents and the bank was not a business partner of Storm Financial nor it maintained any form of interests on the investment scheme.

BOQ also noted that that it was dealing in an investment environment that bears the strict regulatory supervision of the federal government.

Commonwealth Bank, on the other hand, is currently processing compromise agreements with a number of Storm investors, which ASIC said was inadequate, while Macquarie Bank asserted on its statement that "there is a fundamental difference between the role of a margin lender and that of Storm, a financial adviser licensed by ASIC."

ASIC said that the legal proceedings are intended to win repayments for thousands of Storm investors who saw their life savings disappeared when the investment scheme suffered a meltdown at the height of the global financial crisis bearing the heavy weight of more than $3 billion worth of debts.