ANZ is giving more than $13m in compensation to customers after it failed to apply the correct amount of bonus interest to their savings accounts.
On Thursday the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) said the bank was compensating about 200,000 holders of Progress Saver accounts.
The accounts allowed consumers to gain bonus interest if they met certain criteria for deposits and withdrawals. But ANZ miscalculated the interest that some customers should have been paid over several years, because it had “misaligned the monthly cycle”, Asic said.
The bank was contacted by a customer who complained, and the bank reported the matter to Asic.
Asic’s deputy chairman, Peter Kell, said: “ANZ has taken its breach reporting obligations seriously in this matter. Breach reporting helps Asic ensure affected consumers are returned to the position they would have held if it were not for the breach occurring at all.”
ANZ’s website says the Progress Saver accounts offer a 2.7% pa bonus rate when customers “make at least one single deposit of $10 or more in a month and there are no withdrawals, fees or charges processed to the account in that same month”.
The bank has written to current Progress Saver account holders to outline how the accounts work, and is contacting customers who may have not received bonus interest under the scheme.
A spokeswoman for ANZ said the issue impacted just 0.5% of Progress Saver account holders.
“There was an issue where some customers were either underpaid or overpaid the correct amount of bonus interest on their Progress Saver account,” she said.
“We would like to apologise to our customers for the error and any inconvenience caused.”
“Over the past month we have been refunding the amount underpaid to impacted customers, which includes an additional amount of compensation in recognition of the bonus interest not being paid at the correct time. The majority of customers have now been reimbursed, and we expect the refund process will be finalised this week.”
The spokeswoman said a review had been completed and changes had been made to ensure the errors would not occur again.
