Westpac has been ordered to pay penalties in the amount of $113 million for breaches of its obligations to consumers under the Corporations Act and ASIC Act in its banking, superannuation, wealth management and insurance businesses.
Karen Petch, led by Dominique Hogan-Doran SC and Justin Hewitt, acted for ASIC in Federal Court proceedings concerning failures in Westpac’s general insurance systems that caused it to distribute duplicate insurance policies to over 7,000 customers for the same property at the same time, including 3,899 customers since 30 November 2015 and to issue insurance policies to 329 customers who had not consented to entering into any insurance policy at all.
ASIC and Westpac approached the Court jointly for declarations concerning those contraventions and for orders as to penalty. The parties jointly submitted, and the Court accepted, that Westpac Banking Corporation pay to the Commonwealth an aggregate penalty of $15 million in respect of the contraventions.
Further information concerning the other 5 proceedings, and the orders made in each, can be found here.
