An Australian government inquiry has heard that financial advisers working for Australia’s largest bank continued charging clients service fees after they died — in one case for more than a decade.
Documents presented Thursday to the inquiry into misbehavior in Australia’s financial sector showed the Commonwealth Bank had been receiving complaints from clients of being charged for services that had not been provided since 2002.
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But the bank did not report the illegal behavior to the industry regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, until August 2014.
The bank’s subsidiary, Count Financial, discovered a financial adviser knew his client had died in January 2004 but was still reaping 1,000 Australian dollars ($780) a year in service fees in late 2015.
