Australian banks slammed over repayment delays

Customers had to pay for services they did not receive.

Reuters reports that the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has rebuked the country's four big banks including Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Wespac Banking Corp., Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), and the National Australia Bank (NAB), as well as investment bank Macquarie Group and wealth manager AMP for delays in fixing internal systems that has billed customers for services they have not received.

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The regulator said that the companies took too long to identify systemic failures due to ‘legalistic approach’, poor record keeping, and failure to adopt effective ways to identify and compensate wronged customers.

“The institutions have failed to sufficiently prioritise and resource their reviews, particularly as ASIC advised them to commence the reviews in mid-2015 or early 2016," said ASIC commissioner Danielle Press.

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The four banks, as well as AMP, have either paid or offered a total compensation of about $246m (A$350m) for wrongly charged fees by January 2019, and allowed for further payments of another $566m (A$800m) as part of a sweeping probe into systemic corporate misconduct in the financial services sector. 

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