ANZ will reimburse thousands of clients who paid for financial advice they did not receive.

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, or ANZ, will pay A$30 million ($23 million) in compensation to clients who were charged for but never received an annual review.

The payout covers around 8,500 clients of ANZ's fee-for-service package Prime Access, which promises priority access to financial planners, investment monitoring alerts and a documented annual review, the group said in a statement.

The admission coincided with an announcement from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission that it is investigating multiple cases of such advice charges.

ANZ said it had reported the issue to ASIC and begun a remediation programme supported by external consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers and Clayton Utz, a commercial law firm. 

“We sincerely apologise to our clients for not delivering all of the Prime Access services we promised and we will reimburse affected clients as soon as possible,” said ANZ's chief executive of global wealth, Joyce Phillips.

ANZ added that it was working with the regulator to determine the refund process. Meanwhile, all Prime Access annual reviews and documentation due since 2013 have been delivered.