CBA financial planners charged deceased clients for advice

A SERIES of Commonwealth Bank financial planners charged dead customers advice fees, one for more than an entire decade after they died, the financial services royal commission has heard.

A SERIES of Commonwealth Bank financial planners charged dead customers advice fees, one for more than an entire decade after they died, the financial services royal commission has heard.

Counsel assisting the commission, Michael Hodge, QC, presented a compliance report from late 2015 revealing the sordid details in which planners from CBA subsidiary Count Financial profited for years from dead customers’ fees. Three financial planners charged fees to the accounts of four deceased customers for years.

It is believed most of the advisers still work for the bank.

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In the worst case revealed, a planner knew a client had died in January 2004, but was still taking almost $1000 a year in fees until December, 2015.

When questioned about it, the financial planner complained “he didn’t know what to do”. “He had tried to contact the public trustee and had not heard back,” a Count Financial document said.

The suggested action against him from the bank was “possible warning to adviser”.

In another case, a client died in 2007 but the planner only contacted the widow in 2013, after six years of taking fees. No action was taken against the planner.

Mr Hodge asked the bank’s director of Commonwealth Private, Marianne Perkovic, how many breaches would the document have to detect before the problem was considered systemic.

Ms Perkovic said that was decided by a different part of the bank.

CBA’s director of Commonwealth Private Marianne Perkovic. Picture: AAP

The bank said last night it had remediated the cases and paid refunds with interest.

“We owe the families of our deceased customers a sincere apology, not only for the oversight and the length of time to resolve this but for what happened in the first place.” bank spokesman Danny John said.

The revelations come after Ms Perkovic on Wednesday agreed that CBA’s systems were “hopeless” and it “had no idea what was going on” as it ripped fees from customer accounts without giving the ­financial advice promised.

Also this week, a fellow CBA executive agreed with the commission that it was the “gold medallist” of charging fees but not giving advice.

The royal commission yesterday heard Commonwealth Financial Planning had complaints from customers for six years before the bank notified the corporate regulator of those problems in 2014.

The bank ultimately refunded $118.5 million for taking fees for no service.