ANZ Bank fined for misleading conduct
While it feels like the past 10 years has been heavily focused on the decentralized finance market and the misconduct and lack of regulation it appears that mainstream finance may not have well enough regulations in place and in this latest case goes to show that no matter how much government involvement misleading conduct could occur and continue to occur for long periods of time without action or even catching the eye of regulators.
Although, in Australia mainstream banks have been in the sights of politicians and we did recently have a Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking industry although the Royal Commission was watered down and because Banks have a lot more money than people their early lobbying saw the Australian Government backdown from key recommendations that came out of the Royal Commission.
We're the losers again....
Despite everyone's dream of holding corporate banks to account and seeing some meaningful change in the finance sector that would enable people to hold onto more of their hard earned cash it hasn't really panned out the way many thought.
Out of 76 recommendations only 1/3 have been implemented and lets be honest the banking lobbyists got in early to pressure the government and a number of recs haven't been implemented.
That doesn't mean there hasn't been some small wins but how much of those small wins actually accumulate to provide more money in peoples pockets is yet to be seen.
surely there has been change?
Now that the Royal Commission is done and dusted you would think that most the things that were causing strife were picked up and resolved as some of the stories being brought up were dead people being charged for products and services, people with disabilities sold life insurance whom didn't have capacity to make those decisions.
While funeral cover to babies and debt sold to gambling addicts also showed up amongst many other topics.
Well the simple answer is, I guess not.
ANZ fined $25 Million
Today the ANZ Bank was fined $25 Million for not providing benefits it had signed customers up to and ordered to repay $211 Million in remuneration towards the impacted customers.
The Australian Federal Court found that customers who purchased ANZ Breakfree package introduced in 2003 and was on offer until 2021 did not receive the advertised benefits of reduced interest rates, fee waivers and other benefits which impacted 680,000 customers and generated the bank $1.9 Billion.
It was also found that similar cases arose from as far back as the mid 1990s indicating the financial blunder had been an ongoing practice for the bank and costed customers out of reduced fees.
So far the civil cases that have arisen from the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the banking system like the one mentioned above has seen more than $160 Million in fines distributed.
The question still remains, are we any better of?
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