The margin loan claims of Storm Financial (Storm) clients will be fast tracked through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA) resolution scheme, a Slater & Gordon executive has said.
The CBA scheme intends to fast track a number of margin loan claims as well as a number of claims that have been classed as urgent, Slater & Gordon practice group leader Damien Scatinni told InvestorDaily.
“There are some who are urgent because they were people who were really desperate individuals who had ideas of self harm and so we all agreed to put them straight to the front of the queue for obvious reasons,” Scatinni said.
“But we’re going to have the margin loan matters determined as early as possible.”
Slater & Gordon has already begun receiving more than a dozen offers from CBA regarding claims, he said.
“We’ve received dozens. How many dozens I’m not sure,” Scatinni said.
“Offers come up in the rations, they come in the normal course but we’re going to fast track them because we know that we’re not going to reach agreement, so we’re going to have them tested out as soon as possible.
“So far we haven’t come across offers that just irritate us and we haven’t negotiated a single one of them yet. So we’re still at that point.”
The CBA’s resolution scheme has more than 2000 people registered, with more than 1300 individual claims.
The deadline for Storm clients to register with the resolution ended on 30 September. However, CBA is considering select claims after this date, he said.
“We’re approaching CBA on a case-by-case basis. To be fair they are behaving very well,” Scatinni said.
The CBA resolution scheme involves free access to legal advice, access to independent evaluation by two senior legal experts and, if investors are still unhappy with the outcome, they can have their claim and the CBA offer reviewed by a retired High Court judge.
