Due to corporate malfeasance, one of Australia’s largest banks has agreed to pay a record $240 million (£118 million) in fines.
The federal government and about 65,000 clients were impacted by the misconduct.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission and ANZ, also known as the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, announced that they will request that a federal court uphold the penalties for four different prosecutions.
The national company and financial services regulator, ASIC, will levy a record amount of fines on a single entity for corporate malfeasance.
“The penalties we’ll be asking the court to impose, including a record penalty ASIC has sought for unconscionable conduct, reflect the seriousness and number of breaches of law, the vulnerable position that ANZ put its customers in, and the repeated failure to rectify crucial issues,” said ASIC chairman Joe Longo.
The previous record was AU$113 million (£55 million) imposed on the bank Westpac for widespread compliance failures in 2022.
ANZ acknowledged that it had not reimbursed the charges of thousands of deceased customers and had not addressed hundreds of customer hardship notices, some of which had been unanswered for more than two years, according to the regulator.
Tens of thousands of customers were not paid the promised interest rate, the bank claimed, and it made false and misleading claims about savings interest rates.
Along with managing AU$14 billion (£6.9 billion) in bonds over a two-year period, ANZ also engaged in unethical behavior with the Australian government, according to ASIC.
After joining the bank in May, Nuno Matos, the chief executive of ANZ, stated that he anticipated “measurable improvements” that would lead to improved customer service.
