AMP will face a class action alleging its financial representatives pushed AMP inflated insurance policies onto 100,000 customers despite knowing that better policies could be found through other providers.
Six of Australia’s biggest financial services institutions have so far paid or offered $749.7 million in compensation to hundreds of thousands of customers who were provided with non compliant financial advice or charged fees for no service, but the refunds to date are just the tip of the iceberg.
The Federal Court has imposed a penalty of almost $5.2 million on AMP Financial Planning after finding it was “reckless” in its “lamentable failure” to properly respond to a now banned adviser who was churning life insurance for higher commissions.
A year after Commissioner Kenneth Hayne released his scathing report, companies in the financial services sector are still facing fresh class actions over conduct aired at the banking royal commission, and the pace has even picked up in recent months.
A judge overseeing a consolidated class action against four AMP subsidiaries and two trustees over allegedly excessive superannuation fees has ordered the respondents to coordinate after the lead applicants raised concerns about duplication of work.
AMP’s group executive says she was never told of bullying claims made against her by former general counsel Larissa Cook until the lawyer filed a $2.7 million lawsuit alleging “hostile, aggressive and intimidating behaviour” in response to complaints she made about AMP’s fees for no service conduct.
A former AMP general counsel responsible for preparing the financial giant for the banking royal commission has launched a $2.7 million lawsuit alleging “hostile, aggressive and intimidating behaviour” by superiors in response to formal complaints she made about the company’s fees for no services practices.
AMP, Asteron and Westpac have been singled out by ASIC for having higher than expected decline rates for total and permanent disability life insurance claims, in a new review by the corporate watchdog that also revealed a “concerningly high” 60 per cent rejection rate for some narrowly defined policies.
Corrs Chambers Westgarth has been retained by the AMP Financial Planners Association to weigh a possible class action against the wealth manager over its plan to cut the number of authorised advisers and retreat from a promise to buy back their businesses at a set multiple.
A challenge by Quinn Emanuel to a NSW Supreme Court decision staying its shareholder class action against AMP has been unanimously dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which found the class action beauty contest was not decided in error and that subsequently filed representative proceedings were not an abuse of process.