Banking 101

[Sir Stinkalot]

I must have only heard ANZ, Customer and refund. I really should pay more attention.
Here is the full story:

Fair trading breach costs ANZ $10m
The ANZ Bank in New Zealand has been told to pay almost $10 million in fines and refunds to customers after admitting in court to misleading them over the costs of foreign currency transactions.

The bank pleaded guilty to 45 charges of breaching the Fair Trading Act.

The ANZ National Bank admitted it had failed to properly disclose fees for overseas currency transactions on its credit cards between 2001 and 2004.

Auckland district court Judge Graham Hubble said the offences struck at the heart of the consumer protection provisions of New Zealand's Fair Trading Act.

He fined the bank just over $A1 million and ordered them to refund fees totalling almost $A8.5 million.

The bank has apologised to its customers and given an undertaking to repay all the money by the end of the year.

[Driver]

The bank has apologised to its customers and given an undertaking to repay all the money by the end of the year.[/I]

Jeez! That's big of them. So they have agreed to take a bit less than 9 months to pay back $8.5 million? Does this include interest on the money that their customers have unwittingly loaned them since 2001 to 2004? Will the repayment also include the additional interest accruing between now and the end of the year? Will anyone be surprised if it doesn't?

The bloody banks have lost all sight of the fact that they are part of a wider community that should display a sense of responsibility to the rest of us. Instead they focus entirely and absolutely on the narrowest possible definition of the bottom-line.

And before anyone comes back with the argument that the banks' various directors and officers have a duty only to their shareholders, consider this

If the people concerned, ie, the afore-mentioned directors and officers, had any understanding at all of the meaning of enlightened self-interest, they would start to address their responsibility as members of a wider community. If they keep on down their present very narrow track, the wider community will seek alternatives and smarter businesses will see opportunities. The freeing-up of the banks' former stranglehold on housing loans and the emergence of the Bendigo Bank are straws in this wind, for sure.

Rant over (for now - watch this space!)

Col