The corporate regulator announced yesterday it had imposed additional conditions on Nulis’ Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) after identifying a number of “breakdowns in internal procedures” that adversely impacted clients.
These included approximately 220,000 clients being incorrectly charged fees to a cumulative value of $34.7 million and the application of inaccurate death and TPD insurance tests, which led to approximately $1.6 million claims being underpaid or denied.
As part of the agreement with ASIC, Nulis has commissioned KPMG to review its superannuation business, with the consultant’s first report to be provided to ASIC and the trustee by July 2017.
“We support the Assurance Review as it will give our customers further confidence in the systems and processes supporting our superannuation business, following a period of significant transformation,” said NAB acting executive general manager of wealth products Garry Mulcahy.
“Over the past five years, we’ve made substantial changes to upgrade and simplify our superannuation business to better serve our customers’ needs.”
Mr Mulcahy said the company had also identified 10 customers of MasterKey Business Super and MasterKey Personal Super who had life insurance claims incorrectly declined, and have subsequently paid these clients $1.8 million in additional insurance benefits.
Nulis will also pay approximately $150 to each of the 220,000 clients charged incorrect fees.
“Our intention with the proactive restructuring of our corporate super products and the upgrade of insurance products was to do the right thing by our customers, and we did provide equivalent or better outcomes for customers. However, we didn’t execute the change well and we’re sorry to those customers affected,” Mr Mulcahy said.
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