The sale of consumer credit card insurance by Westpac to a handful of customers sees the bank back in court, sparring with ASIC.
While many more customers will have been affected, ASIC made allegations against the bank in relation to 384 accounts.
Westpac, ASIC said, “supplied certain insurance to credit customers which they had not requested and had not agreed to acquire.
“Because in each case the supply of the insurance policies was unsolicited, the customers were not liable to pay premiums but Westpac nonetheless debited the amount of the premiums to the customers’ credit accounts.
“Westpac issued account statements on a regular basis which made statements and itemised the debits for premiums in a way which constituted false, misleading and deceptive representations about the customers’ agreement to acquire the insurance and liability to pay the premiums in contravention of the ASIC Act.”
This legal action is one leg of ASIC’s campaign “to address consumer harms in insurance”.
It follows a detailed ASIC review of the sale of CCI by 11 major banks and other lenders.
ASIC Deputy Chair Karen Chester said, “ASIC’s deep dive investigations in late 2018 and into 2019 found lenders had disappointingly not changed policies and conduct to stem harms from the design and sale of CCI. As a result, we’ve commenced civil proceedings against Westpac.
"In addition to our enforcement action, ASIC has secured over $250 million of remediation for the consumers harmed by the practices of the offending lenders. The CCI remediation program covers 11 major banks and other lenders and has returned on average over $430 to over 580,000 consumers.”