Who is eligible for a share of $60 million in bank refunds?<\/a><\/p>\nMore than 800,000 banking customers are eligible for refunds totalling $60 million.<\/p>\n
The bank has now announced in a statement it has reversed its decision and will begin refunding “relevant concession customers who have incurred unusually high fees” a total of $68 million.<\/p>\n
“We are fulfilling our commitment to make additional goodwill adjustments following ASIC’s Better and Beyond Report,” the statement read.<\/p>\n
Commonwealth Bank said its promise would bring its total amount of “goodwill payments” to $93 million, which included $25 million returned to account holders identified in an earlier ASIC report into high bank fees for First Nations customers.<\/p>\n
‘A logical and ethical contradiction’<\/p>\n
West Australian financial counsellor Alan Gray, who represents First Nations clients across the state’s Kimberley region, said he was “astounded” by the announcement.<\/p>\n
“For months, Commonwealth Bank has been publicly saying ‘no, we’ve done nothing wrong and we shouldn’t have to refund a cent of this $270 million,”” he said.<\/p>\n
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Alan Gray from Bush Money Mob has been campaigning for Kimberley residents due refunds. (ABC Kimberley: Esse Deves)<\/p>\n
“All of a sudden, out of the blue, they decided that ‘oh, we do actually have to refund this money’.<\/p>\n
“Instead of refunding all of it, they’re only refunding a quarter\u2026 it’s just such a logical and ethical contradiction.”<\/p>\n
Mr Gray urged Commonwealth Bank to “do the right thing”.<\/p>\n
“They know there’s a problem, they’ve admitted they should refund it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s just not good enough.”<\/p>\n
Welcome, but disappointed<\/p>\n
ASIC commissioner Alan Kirkland said while he welcomed the change, it was “disappointing” many people charged excessive fees may not receive a cent.<\/p>\n
“These are people on very low incomes,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Any money that comes out of their bank account by way of a fee, is money that they haven’t been able to spend on basics like groceries or energy bills.”<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Alan Kirkland has welcomed CommBank’s decision to refund customers $68 million.\u00a0 (ABC News: Julian Robins)<\/p>\n
Mr Kirkland said the watchdog would continue to monitor the bank’s commitment.<\/p>\n
“It’s always been our view that this shouldn’t be an issue that we need to pursue through litigation or formal action,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We expected banks to make it right.”<\/p>\n
CommBank to contact customers<\/p>\n
While Commonwealth Bank said it would contact eligible customers, Mr Kirkland encouraged people to contact their bank.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Commonwealth Bank says it will begin issuing the payments in February.\u00a0 (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)<\/p>\n
Mr Gray said customers should also reach out to a financial counsellor for advice.<\/p>\n
“I really think people should be contacting their local financial counselling agency and not sitting back and waiting for the Commonwealth Bank,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I really doubt that they have it in their DNA to do the right thing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Commonwealth Bank has confirmed it will refund “relevant” low-income customers who were wrongfully charged excessive bank fees, five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[27134,155401,5799,64,63,198820,101808,99,96,178664,198821,183834,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-366169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-alan-gray","9":"tag-alan-kirkland","10":"tag-asic","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-bank-refunds","14":"tag-broome-news","15":"tag-business","16":"tag-commonwealth-bank","17":"tag-financial-counsellor","18":"tag-goodwill","19":"tag-low-income-earners","20":"tag-wa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}