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Australia's finest pay A$749.7 million in recompense

Chris Hamblin, Editor, London, 18 February 2020

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Six of Australia's largest financial institutions paid or offered a total of A$749.7 million (US$502.9) in compensation, as at 31 December 2019, to customers who suffered because of non-compliant advice or the charging of fees for no service.

AMP, ANZ, CBA, Macquarie, NAB and Westpac undertook "review and remediation programmes" to compensate affected customers as a result of two major reviews by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. ASIC began the reviews in 2015 to look into:

  • whether the institutions made supervised their financial advisors to spot and deal with non-compliant advice; and
  • the extent of failure by the institutions to provide advisory services to customers who were paying fees to receive those services.

Compensation payments made or offered by institution as at 31 December were as follows.
    

                   For bad advice:                  For fees for no service:
                   Compensation   Payees    Compensation     Payees

AMP            $26,654,023     1,987     $140,459,870       193,167
ANZ            $36,205,259      1,777     $59,415,383           21,184
CBA            $9,386,454         628       $164,846,374        50,576
Macquarie           N/A            N/A      $2,583,645                 734
NAB            $39,944,208     1,294     $163,862,768       586,961
Westpac       $29,680,142    1,365     $76,686,356            19,441
Total            $141,870,086    7,051     $607,854,395      872,063

Macquarie's figures for bad advice are separate because ASIC accepted an enforceable undertaking in January 2013 from Macquarie Equities Limited, a subsidiary of Macquarie Group. The firm thereupon did things that were largely consistent with the aims of ASIC’s review. As redress, as at June 2017, it had paid approximately A$24.7 million in compensation to 263 customers.

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