Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) has admitted to engaging in widespread misconduct spanning both its institutional and retail divisions, including overstating bond trading volumes to the Australian Government and mishandling services affecting nearly 65,000 customers.
The bank now faces a total of $240 million in penalties, which ASIC and ANZ will seek to have imposed by the Federal Court.
The misconduct occurred over several years and reflects significant failures in ANZ’s risk management and compliance culture, ASIC said.
ASIC Chair Joe Longo said the penalties reflected the seriousness and breadth of ANZ’s misconduct. “Time and time again ANZ betrayed the trust of Australians. Banks must have the trust of customers and government. This outcome shows an unacceptable disregard for that trust, which is critical to the banking system,” he said.
The four proceedings under consideration include:
• Bond trading misconduct: ANZ acted unconscionably while managing a $14 billion government bond deal in April 2023. Instead of trading gradually to limit market impact, the bank sold large volumes of 10-year Australian bond futures at the time of pricing, placing undue downward pressure on the bond price. Internal records show ANZ was aware of the risks and still misled the Australian Government by overstating trading volumes by tens of billions of dollars over nearly two years. This conduct denied the government an opportunity to protect public funds, which are used for critical services such as health, education, and defence. ASIC has proposed $125 million in penalties for institutional and markets matters, including a record $80 million for unconscionable conduct.
• Financial hardship failures: Between May 2022 and September 2024, ANZ failed to respond to 488 customer hardship notices, leaving vulnerable Australians—some experiencing unemployment, illness, bereavement, or family violence—without timely support. In some cases, the bank pursued debt recovery actions despite customers’ hardship claims. ASIC says ANZ’s failures continued even after being alerted in June 2023 and have since been partially remedied through customer payments and corrections to credit reports.
• Incorrect interest payments: ANZ misled tens of thousands of customers about savings interest rates between July 2013 and January 2024. Due to process deficiencies, bonus and introductory interest rates were not consistently applied. Affected customers are being remediated, with around $480,000 in unpaid interest identified. Separate issues between August 2024 and March 2025 involved inaccurately advertised interest rates on certain accounts, impacting more than 56,000 customers.
• Deceased estates errors: Between July 2019 and June 2023, ANZ failed to refund fees charged to thousands of deceased customers and did not respond to loved ones attempting to manage estates within the required timeframes. Over 18,900 accounts have been remediated, with more than $3.8 million refunded and thousands of families contacted to apologise. The full extent of the issue remains unknown.
ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court emphasised that the misconduct exposed systemic inadequacies across multiple divisions of ANZ. “As one of Australia’s biggest banks, customers trusted ANZ to do the right thing. These failures show a clear inability to manage non-financial risk,” she said.
Including today’s announcement, ASIC has brought eleven civil penalty proceedings against ANZ since 2016, with proposed and ordered penalties totalling more than $310 million. Past penalties have included breaches of responsible lending obligations, misleading conduct, and manipulation of market benchmarks.
ANZ has admitted the allegations in all four current proceedings. The Federal Court will now consider whether the proposed penalties are appropriate and determine any additional orders.
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