Westpac, NAB, AMP, ANZ, Macquarie and the Commonwealth Bank all had their remediation programs reviewed as a result of two major reviews by ASIC.
As a result, the six banks have already paid, or offered to pay, their clients a total of $3.6 billion as of June 30, 2022, after charging them “fees for misconduct in service or advisory default.”
Individuals who suffered loss or damage as a result of these charges, made between January 1, 2009 and June 30, 2015, may be eligible for compensation.
It comes after two major ASIC reviews, in 2016 and 2017, which examined the handling of “default advice” by financial advisers and investigated the extent to which clients were paying for services that banks and institutions were not providing.
From this, the financial regulator was able to determine that there were “systemic failures” and all six banks engaged in “remediation programs” to ensure affected customers were properly compensated.
NAB owed customers the most and has offered to refund more than $1.2 billion to some 775,000 people.
The second highest amount was Westpac with just over $1 billion owed to 120,000 people. AMP will pay $600 million to 335,000 clients.
Commonwealth Bank has paid or offered to pay $300 million to 145,000 customers; ANZ owed $262 million to 70,000 customers and Macquarie’s total refund was approximately $5 million to 1,000 customers.
ASIC said it continues to monitor the “ongoing implementation of institutions’ customer review and remediation programs” following the report.
The people who were affected by the “systemic failures” should have been or will be contacted by their bank to discuss available compensation.
However, if they feel they may have been overlooked, they can contact their bank directly to discuss their eligibility.
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