The civil penalty proceedings filed in the Federal Court target Westpac’s banking, superannuation and wealth management brands, and its former general insurance business. Thousands of customers have been affected by the misconduct and Westpac will repay $80 million, ASIC said Tuesday.

The regulator’s deputy chair Sarah Court said it was unprecedented for ASIC to file multiple cases against the same corporate respondent at the same time.

“These were exceptional circumstances. ASIC had numerous Westpac-related matters under investigation through the course of 2021, and we decided to expedite those matters for consideration by the court at the earliest opportunity,” Court said.

She said Westpac’s “poor systems, poor processes and poor governance” caused widespread consumer harm and showed an overall poor compliance culture within the bank.

“Customers are entitled to have trust and confidence in Westpac being able to deliver what it promises, without suffering financial harm. Westpac must urgently improve its systems and culture to ensure these systemic failures do not continue,” she said.

The conduct targeted in the actions includes charging of alleged fees for no service to thousands of dead customers and charging thousands of customers premiums for duplicate insurance policies.

ASIC alleges that over a 10-year period, Westpac and its related entities charged over $10 million in financial advice fees to over 11,000 deceased customers.

Westpac’s insurance arm distributed duplicate policies to over 7,000 customers for the same property at the same time, ASIC claims.

Other actions allege Westpac subsidiary BT Funds Management charged members insurance premiums that included banned commission payments. BT Funds is remediating over $12 million to more than 8,000 members who were incorrectly charged.

Former Westpac licensees BT Financial Advice, Securitor and Magnitude are accused of charging ongoing contribution fees for advice to customers without proper disclosure. ASIC says some fees were not disclosed to customers at all, and other fees were inadequately disclosed.

The commission estimates at least 25,000 customers were charged over $7 millon in fees that had not been disclosed, or not adequately disclosed.

Westpac is also accused of not having appropriate processes to manage accounts held in the names of deregistered companies, allowing approximately 21,000 deregistered company accounts to remain open. The bank continued to charge fees on those accounts and allowed funds to be withdrawn that should have been remitted to ASIC or the Commonwealth.

The bank also sold consumer credit card and flexi-loan debt to debt purchasers with interest rates that were higher than Westpac was contractually allowed to charge. More than 16,000 vulnerable customers were overcharged $17 million in interest, which has been refunded ASIC says.

Westpac said Tuesday the majority of affected customers had been compensated, and remaining repayments would be completed as soon as possible.

“In each of these matters, Westpac has fallen short of our standards and the standards our customers expect of us. The issues raised in these matters should not have occurred, and our processes, systems and monitoring should have been better. We are putting things right and unreservedly apologise to our customers,” Westpac CEO Peter King said.

In addition to an agreed $100 million penalty, Westpac will also pay $13 million in legal costs. The penalty is subject to approval by the court.

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