Has HR failed in Banks being root cause of issues?

Its quite interesting to see how a bank's human resourcing model works and the dependency on 'contractors'. Many banks have a model with least permanent employees and high reliance on contractors and external vendors to outsource work. 

To the extent, that supposed to be short term contractors even run large projects and its expenditures which runs in millions. Loyalty of such contractors is not easy to assess and associated penalty to failures is an advantage as they are the only ones who can solve, which is a benefit of easy renewals of thier contracts. 

Compared to other industries, this does take its effect of how effective this system of over reliance on contractors work particularly in banking. 

- Senseless low basic salary levels with exceptional bonuses (if your lucky!)

- Exorbitant contractor rates which is usually twice the money of permanent employees

- Contractors have better access to senior management than employees, so heard well (even to make simple things complex)

Of the 3 key resource fulfillment - Permanents, Vendors and Contractors; Vendors could still have a risk based reward system and more effective but still there is a knowledge or skill challenge and its retention within the bank.