Macquarie says 80 clients to receive compensation so far
Macquarie Group will compensate 80 clients so far, or about 13 per cent of cases reviewed in its client remediation work as part of the enforceable undertaking (EU) imposed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
Macquarie provided an update on the compensation numbers yesterday as part of its quarterly results with Macquarie Group Banking and Financial Service Group Head, Greg Ward, stating the 631 cases had so far been reviewed by the group due to past actions by advisers within Macquarie Private Wealth (MPW).
These were divided between reviews initiated by Macquarie and those initiated by clients after the bank sent out 189,000 letters to past and current clients. Macquarie initiated 305 case reviews of which 61 were eligible for compensation while clients initiated 326 cases with 19 eligible for compensation.
These 326 cases were drawn from 831 complaints and 1627 file review requests received by Macquarie after the mass mail out to clients which the bank indicating these numbers were current at 13 Feb 2015 and subject to change as the review process continued.
Macquarie stated that the client review program was still being overseen by ASIC and Deloitte and remediation assessment was based on the consistent application of the approach used by the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Macquarie Group and ASIC announced last week that it had completed the EU but would continue to be monitored by the regulator for another 12 months.
During the two year period of the EU MPW shed about 25 per cent of its planners with the group stating at its annual general meeting that planner numbers were around 300 down from a high of 400 two years ago.
In announcing the end of the EU last week ASIC indicated it would continue to review files from past and current MPW planners and was aware of the movements of some previous MPW planners and would provide warnings to other licensees if it was deemed necessary.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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