Lauren Ryan from Thinktank speaks to Laurence Parker-Brown for our IN60 series. The Inside Adviser
That consumers are influenced heavily by well known, trusted brands comes as no great surprise. What does, though, is that they rate life insurance as the least most important tool in ensuring financial security.
AMP firms fined $24 million for charging dead clients’ super accounts
Two AMP Group companies will pay the Australian Securities Investments Commission $24 million in penalties for charging life insurance premiums and advice fees to more than 2,000 customers they knew were deceased, following a federal court ruling.
AMP Life and AMP Financial Planning admitted to engaging in unconscionable conduct by deducting or failing to properly refund the premiums and fees from superannuation members after being notified of the members’ deaths, which ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court called a “fundamental breach” by the financial services companies. The companies wrongly accepted more than $500,000 in insurance premiums and more than $100,000 in advice fees from deceased customer accounts.
According to ASIC, AMP Life and AMP Financial Planning admitted to accepting the payments despite having reasonable grounds to believe they would not be able to supply the insurance or advice. All four companies were also found to have failed in their obligations as Australian financial services licensees to act efficiently, honestly and fairly.
In ordering the penalties, Federal Court Justice Lisa Hespe called out the companies’ “very serious, wrongful behaviour” and said the members they were improperly charging were “vulnerable, obviously unable to monitor their accounts and were entirely reliant on the representatives of their estates.”
The judge also said systems failures by AMP were to blame, citing a lack of oversight and awareness of the issue by executive management. “The culture of the AMP Group assumed no systemic issues,” she said. “It resulted in a failure to have a process in place that was capable of identifying, investigating and remediating systemic issues for many years.”
AMP Life, which was part of AMP when the conduct occurred but is now part of the Resolution Life Group, was penalised $18 million in the ruling, while AMP Financial Planning must pay $6 million. Two other AMP Group companies – AMP Superannuation and NM Superannuation – were also found to have committed breaches but did not receive a penalty.
AMP issued a statement acknowledging the decision, saying it self-reported to ASIC in 2018 after identifying issues with its processes around deceased customer accounts.
“AMP apologises to all beneficiaries of those affected by this matter,” AMP Group general counsel David Cullen said. “We have made strong progress in becoming a customer-focussed and purpose-led organisation, and this historical matter is not reflective of the AMP we are today.”
ASIC noted that AMP conducted a remediation program in 2019 and 2020 through which it repaid more than $5 million to the estates or representatives of deceased customers over wrongfully charged premiums and fees. The breaches covered in the commission’s complaint occurred between 2015 and 2019.
“Customers, and their beneficiaries, expect financial services providers to have the proper systems in place to ensure, once notified, deceased customers are no longer charged,” Court said. “These systems were inadequate, and customers were let down.”
This article was first published in our sister publication The Inside Investor.
