The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has confirmed an additional $10.5 million in compensation for 160,000 superannuation customers who were affected by breaches within the OnePath group between 2013 and 2016.
ASIC has been monitoring the resolution of a number of OnePath breaches. This has resulted in ANZ (the parent company of OnePath) providing further compensation, mainly in relation to incorrect processing of superannuation contributions and failure to deal with lost inactive member balances correctly.
ASIC has also confirmed the finalisation of all recommendations made by an independent review of OnePath’s business activities. The final two recommendations were the last to be implemented after an independent review of OnePath’s compliance functions was announced in March 2016.
The independent review was sought by ASIC, following ANZ reporting a number of significant breaches. The review addressed OnePath’s life and general insurance, superannuation, and funds management activities.
OnePath has contacted the majority of affected customers and finalised the majority of these additional compensation payments. Customers who have queries about whether they are owed compensation or another form of remediation should contact OnePath on 133 665.
ASIC will continue to monitor the breaches reported to us by ANZ until the matters are resolved, including any remediation where appropriate.
Background
The ANZ Group’s subsidiaries with AFS Licences include OnePath Custodians Pty Ltd, OnePath Life Limited, OnePath Funds Management Limited and OnePath General Insurance Pty Limited.
From early 2013 to mid-2015 around 1.3 million OnePath customers were affected by breaches requiring refunds and compensation of around $4.5 million, rectifications and other remediation of around $49 million.
An ANZ spokesperson said:
In March last year we estimated we would reimburse about $4.5 million in relation to compliance breaches that affected 1.3 million customers.
Following detailed analysis this has increased $10.5 million impacting 160,000 customers.
While this work is ongoing, we don’t expect the majority of these customers to receive significant further reimbursements.
As soon as we became aware of issues in 2013 we reported these breaches to ASIC and have fully cooperated with their review of this matter.
In January 2016 we appointed PwC to conduct an independent compliance review, and reported the findings of that review in December 2016.
