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11 October 2023

Kiwibank

Background:

The case related to Kiwibank’s general terms and conditions that stated customers would not pay transaction fees on their accounts if those customers also had a home loan from Kiwibank. However, between 1 September 2005 and 31 March 2020, some 35,000 of Kiwibank’s home loan customers did not have fee waivers applied to their accounts and were overcharged a total of $1,172,639.94.

As the FMC Act came into force from 1 April 2014, the FMA’s proceedings can only cover conduct from that date onwards, capturing some 19,000 of the total affected customers and overcharged fees totalling $576,809.66.

In June 2018 the FMA and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand commenced their joint conduct and culture review of NZ registered banks. Banks were asked to provide details of any work underway to remediate any identified issues where bank conduct has resulted in detrimental outcomes for customers.

Following publication of the findings from the joint review, the FMA continued to ask banks to inspect their systems for issues. Kiwibank first identified the affected customers in or around August 2019, advised its board of the issue in October 2019 and reported the issue to the FMA shortly after.

In May 2021, Kiwibank commenced efforts to remediate all affected customers. The remediation included the amounts overcharged, plus use-of-money interest.

Timeline:

October 2023 – Kiwibank has been ordered to pay a $812,500 civil penalty at the High Court in Wellington for making false and/or misleading representations to some customers.

December 2021 - The FMA filed High Court civil proceedings against Kiwibank for making false and/or misleading representations, under the fair dealing provisions of the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMC Act).