ANZ Bank to pay $29.4m to customers affected by loan calculator error

Around 86,000 accounts were affected were a loan calculator error. Photo / File

ANZ will pay a further $29.4 million to customers affected by a loan calculator error.

The issue, which happened between June 2015 and May 2016, meant some interest to be charged to customers was left out when calculating their repayments or loan term.

Around 86,000 accounts were affected.

ANZ had previously paid $6m.

Ben Kelleher, ANZ's managing director of retail and business banking, said the bank had been working with the Commerce Commission since 2017 to help them understand what
happened and how it impacted our customers.

"In 2018, we wrote to impacted customers, and if customers were underpaying because of the problem, we gave them a credit, so customers paid less than they'd agreed to under their loan agreement.

"While we believe our initial payment to impacted customers was fair and better than
overseas examples, after discussions with the Commission, we'll make a further payment
to around 86,000 accounts to recognise that we didn't meet our lender responsibilities
under section 9C(2)(a)(ii) of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003.

"ANZ is sorry this issue happened. We worked quickly to fix the problem, owned up to it, and we've made sure no customers are disadvantaged. We'll begin to make the further payments to relevant customers over coming months."