Westpac has lost a bid to keep group members in the dark about the premiums paid for allegedly worthless consumer credit insurance, information the bank said could inflate expectations about settlements worth $126 million reached in three class actions.
ASIC has lost a case accusing the Commonwealth Bank of Australia of hitting customers with $55 million in unauthorised fees, with a judge finding that nearly 1 million customers charged the fees should have known that even banks “sometimes make mistakes”.
Westpac has objected to several proposed notices going out to group members in a class action over ‘junk’ consumer credit insurance, which three of the Big Four banks have agreed to pay $126 million to settle.
Three of the Big Four banks have agreed to pay a total of $126 million to settle class actions on behalf of up to one million customers who were sold consumer credit insurance.
The former chief executive of Commonwealth Bank has told a court internal auditors raised issues with CBA’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing compliance four years before AUSTRAC took action that saw the bank’s share price plummet.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia and unit CommSec have reached an agreement with the Fair Work Ombudsman on liability in enforcement action alleging they knowingly underpaid almost 7,500 employees over $16.4 million.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has argued that disclosing its money laundering failures before AUSTRAC brought proceedings would have misled the market, as the bank takes the rare move of defending a shareholder class action at trial.
While CBA’s defence to a shareholder class action argues the bank did not need to disclose money laundering failures because it doubted AUSTRAC would take legal action, communications show it was drafting a defence six months before proceedings started, a trial has heard.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia knew about a “catastrophic” code error that caused widespread non-compliance with money laundering rules two years before it was disclosed to the market, a court has been told in a rare shareholder class action trial.
Commonwealth Bank units CommSec and Australian Investments Exchange have been ordered to pay more than $27 million for “serious and unacceptable” system failures that led to excessive fee charges for customers.