Thousands of customers should receive compensation for amounts that had been unfairly charged, according to Maurice Blackburn.
More than 185,000 people around Australia have been waiting nearly four years for this day to hold the banks to account and change the landscape of banking for consumers in Australia, Maurice Blackburn head of national class actions practice Andrew Watson said.
“This has been a long tough fight, but today the people that stood up to the banks have had an important victory,” Mr Watson said.
“What has been decided by the court will mean a better deal for bank customers from now on, and potentially a better deal for consumers more broadly where these same principles apply,” he said.
“It is clearly evident from this case that the class action regime in Australia is the only genuinely effective vehicle to offer commercial redress to people who are subjected to corporate wrongdoing in this way.”
However, four of the five fee types subject to litigation were ruled in favour of ANZ.
The fees involved in yesterday’s decision were late payment and over-limit fees on credit cards, and honour, dishonour and non-payment fees on deposit accounts for Australian customers.
“We have consistently been of the view that while these fees have attracted attention and at times been unpopular, we believe they are legal and a legitimate fee for service, and the Federal Court has agreed with that,” ANZ chief executive officer Australia Philip Chronican said, adding that the ruling on late payment fees in favour of IMF was not final.
“I don’t think that this is a final resolution, but we will be working through the implications to understand what that means for late payment fees both looking backwards and forwards” Mr Chronican said
“We can’t rule out that there will be further appeals, either from IMF or ourselves,” he said.
“If this thing means that we need to repay customers, then we will repay customers.”
The class actions are being funded by Bentham IMF (Australia) Ltd on a no-win no-fee basis for participants.
Bentham IMF investment manager James Middleweek said despite not winning on all exception fees, the judgment is still a significant victory for customers.
“This is a great win for consumers in their case against unfair fees charged by banks,” Mr Middleweek said.
“ANZ and other banks will now have to repay most of this amount wherever and whenever it has been charged to their customers in the past six years or more, plus all the interest each customer has missed out on,” he said.
“We note the court did not find in our clients’ favour in the matter of other exception fees – this is disappointing but we will review this part of the judgment carefully and consider our options.”
Maurice Blackburn seeks up to $57 million from ANZ on behalf of approximately 38,000 clients for what it claims are unfair fees dating back to 2010.
