"To work out the credit, we’ve worked out how customer loans were affected. ![]() We think our approach in this situation, which gives a credit to clear anything underpaid while the loan was impacted, is fairer to customers," the ANZ spokesman says. "Where similar problem have happened overseas, some banks have required customers to pay back the amounts they’ve underpaid. "We’re putting customers back into the position they would have been if the error in the calculator hadn’t happened, with ANZ wearing the cost while their loan was impacted." The spokesman says ANZ's solution to the problem means customers will pay less than what they had agreed to under their loan agreement. "Customers, on average, are underpaying $2 per month, so the cost incurred would be interest charges on that $2 underpaid. We think the right thing to do is credit loans, so our customers aren’t disadvantaged." If the issue wasn't rectified the ANZ spokesman says affected customers would have incurred some extra interest on the "small amounts" underpaid. ![]() He says no customers have been overcharged. No customers will be disadvantaged by this issue." If we’d included the interest, customer repayments would have increased by, on average, $2 a month. "The error is no more than a month’s interest for anyone concerned. So in most cases customers were paying slightly less interest than they should have between the date their loan was changed up to when they next changed their loan," the ANZ spokesman says. "The calculator didn’t account for the accrued interest between the first of the month and date the loan was changed. The ANZ spokesman says the bank wanted to make sure it understood how customers were impacted and how it would put things right, and had always planned to start sending letters to customers explaining what happened next month (June). The issue came to light following an NBR story on Wednesday morning, which NBR says stems from contact from a whistle-blower. "We acted quickly when investigating the customers’ queries, and implemented a correct, independently tested calculator in May 2016." No customers will be out of pocket."ĪNZ identified the problem with the loan calculator in March 2016, the bank spokesman says, with six customers over a couple of weeks contacting the bank asking questions about why their loan repayments had unexpectedly changed following a change to ANZ's floating interest rates. "We identified the problem, fixed it, informed the regulator and are putting customers right. Unfortunately, we later found there was an error in the calculator’s code which meant we left out some interest customers were due to be charged after their loan was changed," the ANZ spokesman says. "That loan calculator was used to calculate customer repayments and loan terms when customers asked for changes to their loans. "We have an open investigation into the matter and cannot comment further at this time," a Commerce Commission spokesman says.ĪNZ says the issue has affected about 100,000 home, personal and commercial loan customers, no customers have been overcharged and it's crediting customers "close to" $10 million.Īn ANZ spokesman says the problem stems from the introduction of a loan calculator in June 2015, when the Government introduced the Responsible Lending Code. The consumer watchdog says the country's biggest bank reported "an issue to us relating to their loan calculator" in June 2017. ![]() The Commerce Commission is investigating a problem with an ANZ New Zealand loan calculator that's used to calculate customer repayments and loan terms when customers ask for changes to their loans.
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