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- NAB (NAB) has been ordered to pay an $18.5 million penalty by the Federal Court over numerous breaches regarding fee disclosure statements
- The big-four member apologised “sincerely” for charges relating to failures to provide timely and appropriate fee disclosure statements to its clients
- NAB’s case marks the first penalty imposed by the Court for fee disclosure statements failures under the Corporations Act
- ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court says the penalty is a timely reminder to financial services licensees to meet obligations to their clients
- NAB shares closed today’s session down 0.79 per cent to trade at $27.46
NAB (NAB) has been ordered to pay an $18.5 million penalty by the Federal Court over numerous breaches regarding fee disclosure statements.
The case was first brought against the big-four member by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in December 2019.
According to a statement from ASIC, the court found NAB breached the law on “numerous occasions” by charging fees for personal advice without supplying customers with compliant fee disclosure statements.
The court also found NAB had failed to provide fee disclosure statements to clients on time and misled clients on how much they had paid for services and the services they had received.
ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said the penalty was a timely reminder to financial services licensees to ensure they meet their obligations to their clients.
“NAB’s system failures resulted in significant fee disclosure failures over an extended period,” she said.
“This caused harm to customers as the inaccurate information meant they couldn’t make informed decisions about the financial services they were paying for.”
NAB issued a statement via its website in response to the claims.
“We sincerely apologise to those customers who were impacted by this issue,” NAB Group Executive, Legal and Commercial Services, Sharon Cook said.
“To address this issue, NAB stopped charging ongoing service fees to customers of its former NAB Financial Planning business in 2019.
“In 2020, we established a remediation program which has to date paid approximately $31 million to more than 15,000 customers in order to make things right.”
NAB’s case marks the first penalty imposed by the Court for fee disclosure statements failures under the Corporations Act.
NAB shares closed today’s session down 0.79 per cent to trade at $27.46.
