[1/3] Australian dollars are seen in an illustration photo February 8, 2018. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz
March 10 (Reuters) – Australia's corporate watchdog said the country's six largest banking services providers have paid or offered A$4.7 billion ($3.10 billion) in compensation to customers who suffered losses for fees charged for services that were not provided.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said on Friday it undertook a review of the systems which led to wrongful fees being charged by the country's four biggest banks – Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA.AX), Westpac Banking (WBC.AX), ANZ Group (ANZ.AX) and National Australia Bank (NAB.AX) – plus investment bank Macquarie Group (MQG.AX) and wealth manager AMP Ltd (AMP.AX).
The watchdog's order for customer compensation came at a time when each of the 'Big Four' – which account for the majority of lending in Australia – are being closely scrutinised for abusing their market dominance in the wake of scandals involving misleading financial advice, insurance fraud and interest-rate rigging.
The largest business lender in Australia, NAB, took the lead and coughed up A$1.49 billion in compensation as of the end of 2022, followed by CBA and Westpac coughing up a payout of A$1.13 billion and $1.03 billion, respectively.
ASIC said its final update on remediation figures "draws a line" under its eight-year long programme of addressing financial institutions' failure to provide ongoing services to fee-paying customers.
($1 = 1.5177 Australian dollars)
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Markets have experienced massive upheaval in the last month, prompted in part by two of the three largest banking failures in U.S. history while Swiss lender Credit Suisse was bought by rival UBS Group AG in a merger engineered by Swiss regulators.
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