NAB’s Kiwi subsidiary, the Bank of New Zealand, has been warned by the Commerce Commission over “likely responsible lending failures” and failures to provide timely and accurate information to borrowers.

BNZ said it has made “goodwill payments” to some affected customers of NZ$350 each, totalling over NZ$1 million.

This is on top of refunds of around NZ$3.8 million in interest and fees to affected borrowers made after the bank discovered the issue in 2018.

The probable breaches of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act were self-reported by BNZ to the Commission in 2018. They related to certain home loans, personal loans, credit cards and overdrafts entered into or varied between 6 June 2015 and 24 February 2017. There were 11,956 affected customers.

The Commission said, in its view, “BNZ failed to meet the requirements of the CCCF Act including by making errors when delivering information required by the Act. For example, in some cases BNZ provided incomplete or inaccurate disclosure, and in other cases disclosure was provided a day, a few days, or as many as seven months after the information should have been provided to borrowers.”