{"id":13449,"date":"2025-05-02T13:24:40","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T01:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=13449"},"modified":"2025-05-02T13:24:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T01:24:40","slug":"westpac-bank-fined-3-25-million-over-its-historic-breaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=13449","title":{"rendered":"Westpac bank fined $3.25 million over its historic breaches"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>High Court orders Westpac NZ to pay $3.25m over historic breaches<\/li>\n<li>The bank admitted the breaches and reported itself to the Financial Markets Authority<\/li>\n<li>Westpac is New Zealand&#8217;s fourth-biggest bank by total assets<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One of the country&#8217;s biggest banks has been ordered to pay a multi-million-dollar penalty for misleading and overcharging customers.<\/p>\n<p>The High Court has fined Westpac New Zealand $3.25 million for misleading customers entitled to advertised discounts, and for overcharging some business customers.<\/p>\n<p>The historic breaches resulted in $6.35 million in overcharges and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/business\/559594\/westpac-customers-frustrated-after-online-banking-issues\">affected nearly 25,000 customers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Westpac admitted the breaches in a civil case brought against it by the Financial Markets Authority at the High Court in Auckland, in December last year.<\/p>\n<p>The FMA said customers entitled to various benefits under its Employee, Gold and Platinum (EGP) packages failed to receive the advertised discounts.<\/p>\n<p>The EGP packages were offered between February 2004 and November 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The FMA also said personal and business banking customers did not receive benefits under one of Westpac&#8217;s other advertised packages, called Association Packages.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, the FMA said Westpac failed to honour agreed pricing for business customers who held Business Transact Accounts.<\/p>\n<p>As of 31 December 2024, Reserve Bank data showed Westpac was New Zealand&#8217;s fourth-largest bank by total assets.<\/p>\n<p>It made a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/business\/532778\/westpac-profit-up-10-percent-as-lending-steadies-bad-debts-fall\">profit of $1.05 billion<\/a>\u00a0for the year ended September.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Westpac&#8217;s issues stemmed from deficiencies in its systems that meant the bank failed to deliver contractually agreed discounts to customers,&#8221; FMA head of enforcement Margot Gatland said.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Geoffrey Venning issued a 35 percent discount to the penalty, noting Westpac self-identified the issues and reported itself to the FMA, and fully cooperated with the investigation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Westpac acknowledged responsibility for its failures from the outset and has been entirely open and cooperative with the FMA throughout the investigation, admitting liability at the earliest stage,&#8221; Justice Venning said.<\/p>\n<p>A Westpac spokesperson said all customers had been remediated and it no longer offered the packages.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Westpac co-operated fully with the FMA&#8217;s investigation and we are pleased to have resolved the matter,&#8221; the bank said.<\/p>\n<p>Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>High Court orders Westpac NZ to pay $3.25m over historic breaches The bank admitted the breaches and reported itself to the Financial Markets Authority Westpac is New Zealand&#8217;s fourth-biggest bank by total assets One of the country&#8217;s biggest banks has been ordered to pay a multi-million-dollar penalty for misleading and overcharging customers. The High Court [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13451,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13449\/revisions\/13451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}