The Australian Securities & Investments Commission announced that Westpac Banking Corporation has been ordered to pay AUD 26 million in civil penalties after the court found it failed to respond within the legal timeframe to more than 200 online financial hardship requests over nearly six years from 2017 to 2023. The failures affected customers of Westpac and its subsidiaries St George Bank, Bank SA and Bank of Melbourne who were seeking help with repayments on products including home loans, credit cards, personal loans and car loans. Justice McEvoy found the contraventions were not deliberate but arose from inadequate systems and operational failures and were grossly negligent. Some customers waited weeks beyond the legal deadline for a response and some received no response at all. The judgment states the conduct seriously undermined the legislative hardship regime, affected vulnerable customers, and in some cases led to adverse credit information being recorded and debts being sold to third-party debt purchasers. Westpac admitted contraventions of section 72(4) of the National Credit Code and sections 47(1)(a) and 47(4) of the National Credit Act, and paid more than AUD 1.7 million in remediation, including refunds of fees and interest and compensation for non-financial loss.

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