AUCKLAND (CU)_In March last year, the New Zealand arm of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) admitted a breach of its lending obligations, following its failure to take the necessary care required when providing loan variation information to more than 100,000 customers between May 2015 and May 2016. Just over a year later, ASB Bank, owned by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, also accepted that it had failed to ensure its systems and processes provided sufficient information to more than 73,000 home and personal loan customers in New Zealand, who made certain changes to their borrowings. Accordingly, the former entered into a settlement agreement with the NZ Commerce Commission, under which it agreed to pay a compensation of more than NZ$35 million to its affected customers, while the latter agreed to pay NZ$8.1 million over its breaches between June 2015 and June 2019.
However, according to Scott Russell, the founder of Auckland-based Russell Legal, under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA), these customers are entitled to…