A study of large Australian banks shows they have compensated a large collective sum to customers who had been ripped off or given poor and non-compliant advice.

Six of Australia's largest financial institutions paid or offered a total of A$749.7 million (US$502.9) in compensation, as at 31 December 2019, to customers who suffered because of non-compliant advice or the charging of fees for no service.

AMP, ANZ, CBA, Macquarie, NAB and Westpac undertook "review and remediation programmes" to compensate affected customers as a result of two major reviews by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. ASIC began the reviews in 2015 to look into: whether the institutions made supervised their financial advisors to spot and deal with non-compliant advice; and the extent of failure by the institutions to provide advisory services to customers who were paying fees to receive those services.

Compensation payments made or offered by institution as at 31 December were as follows.

                   For bad advice:                  For fees for no service:

                   Compensation   Payees    Compensation     Payees

AMP            $26,654,023     1,987     $140,459,870       193,167

ANZ            $36,205,259      1,777     $59,415,383           21,184

CBA            $9,386,454         628       $164,846,374        50,576

Macquarie           N/A            N/A      $2,583,645                 734

NAB            $39,944,208     1,294     $163,862,768       586,961

Westpac       $29,680,142    1,365     $76,686,356            19,441

Total            $141,870,086    7,051     $607,854,395      872,063

Macquarie's figures for bad advice are separate because ASIC accepted an enforceable undertaking in January 2013 from Macquarie Equities Limited, a subsidiary of Macquarie Group. The firm thereupon did things that were largely consistent with the aims of ASIC’s review. As redress, as at June 2017, it had paid approximately A$24.7 million in compensation to 263 customers.