Legal fight over NZ bank fees on hold

Thousands of customers came forward in class action to try and claw back penalty fees charged for unarranged overdrafts, bounced cheques and late and over-limit credit cards. Photo / NZME.

A legal fight over bank fees has been put on hold to await the outcome of a similar court case in Australia.

Lawyer Andrew Hooker launched a campaign targeting penalty fees at the end of 2013 announcing plans to file action against the ANZ, Kiwibank, Westpac, BNZ and the ASB.

Thousands of customers came forward and signed up to try and claw back the penalty fees charged for unarranged overdrafts, bounced cheques and late and over-limit credit cards.

But yesterday (April 2) Hooker said all parties had agreed to put a stay on proceedings to await a decision from the Australian Federal Court regarding a case against the ANZ in Australia.

The ANZ is the parent company of ANZ in New Zealand.

In February last year a judge ruled that late payment fees charged by the ANZ in Australia on credit cards were exorbitant.

The class action was taken on behalf of more than 43,000 customers who claimed they had been charged excessive fees for years.

In some cases the fees were 70 times the cost to the bank of administering late payments.

But the judge also ruled in ANZ's favour by dismissing claims that other types of bank fees were illegal penalties.

The case has since been appealed.

Hooker said he expected a decision to be made by the Australian Federal Court soon but there was no specific timeframe.

"These sorts of decisions take a while."

Until then the New Zealand cases had been stayed.

Hooker said the outcome of the Australian case would not necessarily determine what happened in New Zealand as New Zealand had its own laws and court process. But it made sense to wait.

Hooker said he had yet to file court documents against the ASB but he planned to do so once he had enough resources in place to gather the information together.

The banks have previously said they would vigorously defend any action taken.