“It should not take an ASIC review to force $93 million in refunds or make banks assess their processes to ensure the trust and expectations placed in them are justified.”

The report also included action taken by the four participating banks — ANZ, Bendigo Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Westpac — including promises of $28 million in refunds and the migration of over 200,000 low-income customers from high to low-fee accounts.

Banking practices ‘a much wider problem’

“What started as an initiative focused on addressing avoidable bank fees for low-income customers in regional and remote locations, particularly First Nations consumers, revealed a much wider problem affecting customers nationwide,” ASIC commissioner Alan Kirkland said.

What did the 2025 report find?

Seven additional banks committed to paying back $3.6 million, benefiting an extra 45,000 customers.

Nine additional banks have also improved their internal processes to serve First Nations customers, the report says. This included six banks collecting information on customers who identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander to inform their service delivery.

“We encourage consumers to challenge their banks to ensure that they are in the best account for their needs. More importantly, we encourage banks to do more to proactively identify low-income customers and move them to low-fee accounts.”

How have banks responded?

Also among ANZ’s changes are automatically moving customers who receive particular payments into an ANZ account into a low-fee account, unless they prefer otherwise, improvements to its account opening process for these customers and setting up a dedicated support line for First Nations customers.