Six Banking Giants Paid $3.6 Billion for Financial Advice Related Misconduct, ASIC Reports

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced that six of Australia's largest banking and financial services institutions have paid or offered a total of $3.6 billion in compensation, as at 30 June 2022, to customers who suffered loss or detriment because of fees for no service misconduct or non-compliant advice.

This includes $438m paid or offered by the institutions between 1 January to 30 June 2022.

AMP, ANZ, CBA, Macquarie, NAB and Westpac (the institutions) undertook the review and remediation programs to compensate affected customers as a result of two major ASIC reviews. ASIC commenced the reviews to look into:

• ​the extent of failure by the institutions to deliver ongoing advice services to financial advice customers who were paying fees to receive those services.

• ​how effectively the institutions supervised their financial advisers to identify and deal with 'non-compliant advice' – i.e. personal advice provided to a retail client by an adviser who did not comply with the relevant conduct obligations in the Corporations Act, such as the obligations to give appropriate advice or to act in the best interests of the clients, at the time the advice was given.