ASIC has announced details of compensation being paid to financial product customers by two banks which failed to provide advertised benefits.

In both cases the bank discovered the breach following a customer complaint and reported it to ASIC under its breach reporting obligations in the Corporations Act.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) will refund approximately $80 million to around 216,000 Wealth Package customers as compensation for failing to apply fee waivers, interest concessions and other benefits since 2008. The refund payments include an additional amount of interest to recognise the time elapsed since the relevant benefit was not applied.

CBA relied on staff to manually apply many of the discounts available under the Wealth Package. Investigations revealed that an exception reports, which was designed to detect when the discounts were not properly applied, was not working properly.

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) is compensating around 200,000 customers approximately $13 million after it failed to accurately apply bonus interest to Progress Saver Accounts (PSA) for a number of years. The refund payment includes an additional amount to recognise the time elapsed since the initial breach.

PSA holders qualify for bonus interest payments in any particular month if they satisfy deposit and withdrawal requirements for that month. ANZ misaligned the monthly cycle it applied to determine whether a PSA holder was eligible for bonus interest payments and the monthly cycle it applied to calculate bonus interest payments. This issue was limited to PSA holders who made qualifying deposits or disqualifying withdrawals near the end of their monthly interest cycle, and did not impact the payment of bonus interest in other circumstances.As a result, PSA holders may have made a qualifying deposit or disqualifying withdrawal on the last day of the previous monthly cycle while believing that it was the first day of a new monthly cycle.