ANZ bank has admitted to making false representations to customers in two separate cases, resulting in more than $4 million in overcharges.
The Financial Markets Authority says New Zealand’s biggest bank has admitted to breaching fair dealing laws and agreed to pay a fee totalling $3.25m to the Government, instead of a pecuniary penalty under the Financial Markets Conduct Act.
“ANZ self-reported two fair dealing breaches to us,” FMA head of enforcement Margot Gatland said.
An ANZ spokesperson said the bank accepted the FMA’s findings.
“We remain committed to doing the right thing by our customers and continuously improving how we operate.”
The first breach was for wrongly applying fees and interest to customers’ accounts for unarranged overdrafts between December 20, 2012 and May 31, 2023, affecting 209,960 ANZ customers.
The total dollar value of incorrectly charged overdraft fees was $4,373,972 and included $879,078 in excess interest.
She said ANZ made remediation payments to all impacted customers and made reasonable attempts to contact all former affected customers.
The second fair dealing breach involved wrongly reclaiming mortgage incentive payments, made to customers the condition they kept their banking with ANZ for the next two to three years.
However, Gatland said ANZ sought repayment from customers when they discharged their mortgage within that time, on an assumption that the customer was moving some of their banking to a competitor, which would have been a breach of the incentive payments terms.
“However, in some instances ANZ has since not been able to verify that the customer breached the agreement to keep its banking with ANZ and has therefore remediated 1019 customers who fall within this category,” she said.
“Banks are required to ensure representations they make to customers about overdraft fees and cash contributions are not misleading and do not cause harm to customers.
“ANZ made false representations in both instances.”
rnz.co.nz
