By Alice Uribe


SYDNEY--Australia's Federal Court has ordered Westpac Banking Corp. to pay 113 million Australian dollars (US$83.3 million)in penalties for widespread compliance failures across multiple businesses, including the lender's banking, superannuation, wealth-management and insurance brands.

Justice Beach on Friday handed down his decision in the last of six separate civil penalty proceedings filed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission against Westpac in November 2021, fining the company A$40 million for charging financial-advice fees to more than 11,800 deceased customers.

"The breaches found by the court in these six cases demonstrate a profound failure by Westpac over many years and across many areas of its business to implement appropriate systems and processes to ensure its customers were treated fairly," ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said in a statement.

The multiple ASIC legal actions cover fees for no service- dead people, general insurance, inadequate fee disclosure, deregistered company accounts, debt onsale, and insurance in superannuation. Each had varying penalties with the total reaching A$113 million.

Westpac has admitted to the allegations in each of the proceedings and will remediate more than A$80 million to customers.

"Westpac consented in each of the matters to the orders made and to the penalties and cooperated with ASIC in resolving the matters," the commission said.

Across all six matters, Justice Beach noted that systems and compliance failures were a common feature and the misconduct by Westpac was considered serious.

With respect to the charging of deceased customers, Justice Beach said that Westpac and the related entities "utterly failed to address the issues systematically."


Write to Alice Uribe at alice.uribe@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

04-22-22 0233ET