Macquarie Bank fined $14m for savings rate blunder

Detailed summary

Macquarie Bank has been slapped with a $14 million penalty for promoting misleading interest rates on a savings account that confused customers on how much interest they would…

Macquarie Bank has been slapped with a $14 million penalty for promoting misleading interest rates on a savings account that confused customers on how much interest they would earn.

Macquarie admitted to breaching the law in a case brought by ASIC in the NSW Supreme Court, conceding it failed to take necessary steps to ensure statements about its Welcome Rate were clear and not likely to cause confusion for new customers.

In July 2015, Macquarie Bank started offering a Welcome Rate for its Savings Accounts for the first four months after opening an account for balances of up to $250,000.

Between 1 December 2021 and 9 September 2022, Macquarie advertised its Welcome Rate as a "welcome variable rate" or "bonus offer."

ASIC said the Welcome Rate generally operated as a fixed rate that applied instead of, rather than in addition to, the standard rate during the four-month promotional period.

Macquarie also described the offer as a "bonus" which ASIC alleged could lead customers to believe it was paid on top of the standard variable rate.

Macquarie updated its website on 9 September 2022 to refer to a fixed rate rather than reference "variable rate" combined with the word "bonus" so as not to cause customer confusion.

The bank admitted that "customers may have considered that the welcome interest rate applied a bonus margin above the standard stepped variable rate," court documents show.

Some 39,566 customers have been remediated by Macquarie Bank to the tune of $8.8 million.

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