National Australia Bank confirms that ASIC has today launched civil proceedings against NULIS Nominees (Australia) Ltd and MLC Nominees Pty Ltd in relation to certain fees charged to MLC MasterKey Super fund members.

Chief Legal and Commercial Counsel Sharon Cook said NAB was still assessing the details of the case.

“We will consider carefully the allegations that have been made,” Ms Cook said.

“We respect the work of our regulators and will work with ASIC on these matters.”

As confirmed by Ms Cook in July, NAB will be remediating these customers. We are almost half way through the process of refunding $67 million in Plan Service Fees, plus compensation for lost earnings. By the end of November we expect to be finished – closing the issue for the 305,000 members who were affected.

“We are acting to rebuild trust with our customers,” she said.

“Our announcement this week about removing grandfathered commissions from NAB Financial Planning and NAB Direct Advice, as well as accelerating repayments where fees have been wrongly charged, are more steps in this direction.”

Background:

NAB announced in July that MLC’s superannuation Trustee, NULIS, would stop deducting the Plan Service Fee from MLC MasterKey Personal Super (MKPS) member accounts from 30 September 2018 and all MKPS members would be fully refunded for Plan Service Fees paid while in the product.

On Monday, NAB committed to provide all compensation to customers in relation to Plan Service Fees by the end of November 2018. NAB has also announced NAB Financial Planning (FP) and NAB Direct Advice would, from January 2019, no longer accept grandfathered commissions from NAB Wealth superannuation and investment product providers. The move will see around 32,000 customers benefit through fee rebates and reductions worth approximately $11 million.