Maurice Blackburn

Maurice Blackburn is acting in a series of proposed class actions against Australian banks for repayment of exception fees they have charged to their customers over the last 6 years. Exception fees include honour and dishonour fees as well as over limit fees and fees for late payment, on bank accounts and credit cards.

The legal basis for the proposed actions is that if there is a breach by the customer of his or her contract with the bank, the bank is only entitled to charge a reasonable estimate of the actual cost to the bank of that breach. Whilst the real cost to the banks of each transaction is likely to be at most a dollar or two, the exception fees in fact charged for breaches have ranged from about $25 up to $60 per transaction. The banks also sometimes charge penalty interest as well as the exception fee, and often have security over the family home to cover any amount overdrawn or late in any event.

Such fees are recoverable at law if they constitute a penalty charged by the bank, that is, when they are out of all proportion to the true cost of any breach to the bank. We estimate that the banks have charged their customers in excess of $5 billion dollars for late payment, dishonour fees and other exception fees over the last 6 years.

The class actions will be funded by IMF (Australia) Ltd, on a "no win no charge" basis, that is, IMF covers all of the costs and only gets paid if the cases are successful. IMF also agrees to meet the banks' costs if the cases are unsuccessful. There is no cost to you unless you successfully recover monies.

If you are interested in knowing more about the Bank Fees class actions you can find the information you need at the secure website www.financialredress.com.au . Financial Redress is a wholly owned subsidiary of IMF. Registration of your interest can only be made on this website. If you have further queries after visiting this website you may telephone 1300 4 REDRESS or 1300 473 373. It is entirely a matter for you whether you join these class actions or not, and although we consider the cases have reasonable prospects of success you should feel free to obtain independent legal advice.

Owing to the number of bank customers likely to participate in the cases, please do not telephone our office as we will be unable to deal with your enquiry.