The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) has reported that the country’s five largest banking and financial services firms have paid a total of A$119.7m (£67.6m, $82m, €74.2m) in compensation as at 30 June 2019.
The watchdog said that this was handed to customers who suffered losses because of non-compliant advice given by financial advisers.
National Bank of Australia (NAB) has given out the most at around A$32.4m, which involved the greatest number of advisers (81).
AMP Australia (AMP) has paid redress to the greatest number of customers at 1,903.
Breakdown
The table below provides a breakdown of the compensation payments by all five banks as at 30 June 2019.
| Institutions | Compensation paid | Number of customers | Number of advisers | Completion date |
| AMP | A$24.8m | 1,903 | 32 | December 2021 |
| ANZ | A$26.7m | 1,357 | 34 | October 2021 |
| CBA | A$9.3m | 853 | 21 | November 2019 |
| NAB | A$32.4m | 1,032 | 81 | December 2022 |
| Westpac | A$26.5m | 1,173 | 44 | June 2020 |
*All compensation figures have been rounded up.
Asic expects further compensation to be paid as the institutions continue their review and remediation programmes for non-compliant advice.
Review
The compensation was mandated following the 2015 Asic review, ‘Financial advice: Review of how large institutions oversee their advisers’.
It focused on:
- How AMP, ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac identified and dealt with non-compliant advice by their advisers between 1 January 2009 and 30 June 2015;
- The development and implementation by these institutions of a framework for the large-scale review and remediation of customers who received non-compliant advice between 1 January 2009 and 30 June 2015; and
- A review of Australian financial services (AFS) licensees, selected from within the institutions, to test their processes for monitoring and supervising their advisers.
Since the publication of the review, Asic has been monitoring the ongoing implementation of the firms’ customer review and remediation programmes.
