Six instos to pay $1.05bn in FFNS compensation
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has announced that six of Australia's largest banking and financial services institutions have paid or offered a total of $1.05 billion in compensation, as at 30 June 2020, to customers who suffered loss or detriment because of fees for no service (FFNS) misconduct or non-compliant advice.
This was an additional $295.9m in compensation payments or offers by the institutions from 1 January to 30 June 2020, the regulator said in its update on compensation for financial advice related misconduct.
The institutions included AMP, ANZ, CBA, Macquarie, NAB and Westpac.
ASIC commenced the reviews in 2015 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; and
- 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.
A breakdown of the compensation payments made or offered by the institution as at 30 June 2020.
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