A judge has questioned ASIC’s proposed $5 million penalty against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, saying it was “on the light side” for the bank’s conduct in overcharging $8 million in fees on its agricultural products.
The High Court’s abolition of the so-called Chorley exception does not apply to a party’s in-house counsel, which is still permitted to seek its own legal costs for prosecuting or defending a proceeding, a judge has found.
The Big Four banks were trying to shore up their profits when they refused to pass on home loan interest rate cuts to consumers in full last year, an interim report of an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry has found.
A judge has criticised as “meretricious” and “ridiculous” opposition by Commonwealth Bank of Australia to a discovery application by a former general manager who claims he lost his job for blowing the whistle on alleged manipulation of staff bonuses.
The corporate cop has brought legal proceedings against the Commonwealth Bank’s wealth management unit claiming it made misleading or deceptive statements to over 12,000 fund members during the transition to MySuper accounts.
The corporate watchdog has brought two post-Hayne Commission proceedings against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, alleging it upped the credit limit of a known problem gambler and overcharged more than $8 million in fees on its agricultural lending products.
Six of Australia’s biggest financial services institutions have so far paid or offered $749.7 million in compensation to hundreds of thousands of customers who were provided with non compliant financial advice or charged fees for no service, but the refunds to date are just the tip of the iceberg.
A year after Commissioner Kenneth Hayne released his scathing report, companies in the financial services sector are still facing fresh class actions over conduct aired at the banking royal commission, and the pace has even picked up in recent months.
CBA subsidiary Avanteos Investments Limited has been hit with extra conditions on its superannuation licence by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority after it was revealed the investment management firm charged fees to thousands of deceased superannuation members.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s insurance division, CommInsure, has been fined $700,000 for breaching insurance hawking laws in Australia’s first post-Royal Commission criminal conviction, dodging a maximum fine of over $1.8 million through an early guilty plea and cooperation with ASIC.