The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (“ASIC”) recently announced that it reached a settlement with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (“ANZ”), one of Australia’s largest banks, in connection with “widespread misconduct across products and services impacting nearly 65,000 customers.” ANZ agreed to pay $240 million to resolve four separate proceedings related to misconduct that occurred for many years as the result of alleged failures to manage non-financial risk across the bank, including a matter concerning “unconscionable conduct” for services provided to the Australian Government. According to ASIC, ANZ engaged in unconscionable conduct regarding its management of a $14 billion government bond deal in which the bank reportedly overstated bond trading data volumes by tens of billions of dollars for almost two years. The other three matters concern allegations regarding ANZ’s failure to respond to 488 customers who submitted financial hardship notices between May 2022 and September 2024; its failure to refund fees charged to thousands of deceased customers between July 2019 and June 2023; and misleading and false statements made on the Bank’s website between July 2013 and March 2025 that offered promotional bonus interest rates that were not always applied.
The penalties, which are subject to the approval by Australia’s Federal Court, include $125 million for institutional and markets matters and a record $80 million for unconscionable conduct. According to ASIC, ANZ has admitted the allegations in each of the proceedings, and the Federal Court is now tasked with considering each matter separately to determine whether the penalties imposed by ASIC are appropriate.
ASIC also reported that, including the four new matters, the Commission has filed a total of eleven civil penalties against ANZ bank since 2016, with proposed and ordered penalties totaling more than $310 million. According to ASIC Chair Joe Long, “the total penalties across these matters are the largest announced by ASIC against one entity and reflect the seriousness and number of breaches of law, the vulnerable position that ANZ put its customers in and the repeated failures to rectify crucial issue.”