“Customers are entitled to rely on their bank to apply discounts and fee exemptions accurately. ASB failed to detect and address these issues over many years.”
“We acknowledge ASB’s co-operation, however, the duration of the failings and the delays in identifying and escalating the issues meant that a strong regulatory response was necessary.”
Justice Laura O’Gorman said: “Where contraventions of the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMCA) are the result of process or system failures, the penalty must be set at a level that creates a strong incentive for financial institutions to maintain adequate systems and processes.
“The penalty needs to be at a level that clearly signals manual processes without adequate quality assurance and proactive problem detection and escalation is unacceptable.”
ASB made $1.45 billion in profit in the 12 months to June 2025, a dip of 0.4% on the previous year.
The bank said it had set aside A$33m ($36.18m) in customer “remediation provisions”.
ASB chief executive Vittoria Shortt declined to elaborate on why the bank had put money aside to potentially reimburse customers for a mistake, or various mistakes, the bank has made.
She said it was standard practice for the bank to notify regulators if it believed there was a breach, before looking to rectify the issue and pay out customers.
