National Australia Bank (NAB) acknowledges the $18.5 million penalty imposed today by the Federal Court in proceedings brought against it by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in relation to Fee Disclosure Statements.

The Federal Court proceedings commenced by ASIC in December 2019 alleged that NAB failed to issue or issued defective Fee Disclosure Statements. In resolving the proceeding, NAB admitted to a number of the alleged breaches.

NAB Group Executive, Legal and Commercial Services, Sharon Cook said: “We sincerely apologise to those customers who were impacted by this issue.

“To address this issue, NAB stopped charging ongoing service fees to customers of its former NAB Financial Planning business in 2019. In 2020, we established a remediation program which has to date paid approximately $31m to more than 15,000 customers in order to make things right,” Ms Cook said.