Blunder Down Under: Australian banks pay millions for advice failures

By James Langton | February 11, 2020 | Last updated on February 11, 2020
1 min read

Poor financial advice has cost the big six Australian banks almost $750 million (all figures in Australian dollars) in compensation paid to harmed consumers, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) reported.

As of Dec. 31, 2019, the country’s six biggest financial institutions have paid a total of $749.7 million in compensation to clients who suffered losses due to non-compliant advice or from being charged fees for services they didn’t receive, the regulator reported.

The bulk of the compensation, $607 million worth, was paid for client overcharging, which affected more than 872,000 clients. Another $141 million was paid to more than 7,000 clients who received non-compliant advice.

The payouts followed a pair of ASIC reviews that began in 2015 to examine how firms supervise their reps’ advice and their failure to provide ongoing services to clients who were charged for those services.

In 2016, the ASIC issued a report detailing systemic failures in the advice divisions of the big six firms (AMP, ANZ, CBA, Macquarie, NAB and Westpac).

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James Langton

James is a senior reporter for Advisor.ca and its sister publication, Investment Executive. He has been reporting on regulation, securities law, industry news and more since 1994.