Macquarie Bank said it will not contest the ASIC proceeding and is expected to pay a $14 million civil penalty.<\/p>\n
It said the ASIC announcement related to products offered on its website between December 2021 and September 2022.<\/p>\n
It said the bank will admit to a contravention of its obligation to ensure it provides financial services efficiently, honestly and fairly.<\/p>\n
“Macquarie’s website offered a Welcome Rate on its Macquarie Savings Account,” the bank’s said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“The matter arose because, when standard variable rates increased and exceeded the Welcome Rate, customers were instead paid the higher standard variable rate though some expected a bonus margin over that rate.<\/p>\n
“Macquarie acknowledges that some of the wording on its website was not sufficiently clear and may have caused confusion.”<\/p>\n
Macquarie’s head of banking and financial services Ben Perham said the bank’s customers high expectations of it, “and although ASIC has acknowledged our actions were not deliberate, we should have better explained on our website how the Welcome Rate would be applied and we apologise for any confusion caused.”<\/p>\n
“We received some customer complaints regarding the description of the Welcome Rate on our website, and we elected to pay $8.8 million in compensation to put customers in the position that they would have been if the Welcome Rate was a fixed bonus interest margin,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Additionally, we have conducted a thorough review of all product descriptions we use across our website.”<\/p>\n
ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland said, “banks must get the basics right, which includes having systems and processes that deliver on the promises they make to customers”.<\/p>\n
“This wasn’t just unclear wording,” Mr Kirkland said.<\/p>\n
“Macquarie’s systems and controls were not rigorous enough to identify the risk that customers would misunderstand how the Welcome Rate worked.<\/p>\n
“At a time when Australians are contending with cost-of-living pressures, consumers deserve clear information about savings rates and the financial benefits they are promised.”<\/p>\n
The proposed resolution is subject to the Court’s approval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Macquarie Bank said it will not contest the ASIC proceeding and is expected to pay a $14 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":959842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2001,64,63,166,2009,99,2005,164,160,2010,2006,2002,1491],"class_list":["post-959841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asx","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-dollar","tag-bitcoin","tag-business","tag-dow-jones","tag-economy","tag-live-blog","tag-live-update","tag-nyse","tag-share-market","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959841","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=959841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}