ANZ to repay financial planning clients

A statement issued by ANZ revealed that clients of Prime Access did not receive services they had paid for. The major bank has since reported the issue to ASIC and has commenced a remediation process.

“ANZ estimates the cost of reimbursing around 8,500 clients who did not receive a documented annual review to be approximately $30 million. ANZ is working with ASIC to finalise the refund methodology and payments will commence as soon as the methodology is agreed,” the statement said.

ANZ global wealth CEO Joyce Phillips said ANZ “sincerely apologises to our clients for not delivering all of the Prime Access services we promised and we will reimburse affected clients as soon as possible”.

The news comes as ASIC issued an update on its probe into vertically integrated advice businesses.