Bank refunds $1.73m after wrongly charging thousands of customers

More than 7300 TSB business customers were charged a fee they should never have paid, for six years, before the bank was caught out and forced to refund $1.73 million.

The Financial Markets Authority has issued a public warning against TSB after the bank charged a 25-cent fee on some business cheque transactions that were not supposed to attract any charge under its own terms and conditions. The overcharging ran from November 30, 2017 to November 20, 2023.

FMA acting head of perimeter and response Trish Millward said customers had been left with no way of picking up on the error themselves.

"Customers should be able to trust that a bank charges them only what its terms and conditions say it will," she said.

"TSB's customers had no practical way to check these fees for themselves, and the overcharging went on for six years."

Millward said the case pointed to a wider lesson for the sector.

"When financial institutions make changes to their terms and conditions, they need to ensure that their systems can deliver those changes to their customers," she said.

"Financial institutions need to ensure their systems and processes support fair customer outcomes."

The problem traced back to a change TSB made to its business cheque terms and conditions in November 2017, intended to make the fee structure clearer. Instead, it left out certain transactions that the bank's systems continued to charge for anyway, creating a mismatch between what customers were told and what they actually paid.

TSB chief executive Kerry Boielle apologised for the error.

"TSB acknowledges the Financial Markets Authority's warning about a historic (2017-2023) issue involving fees charged on some business cheque accounts," she said.

"We are sorry to the customers affected. We have refunded impacted customers and strengthened our processes to ensure our fees are clearly described and charged correctly."

The FMA said TSB had reported the issue itself, cooperated with the regulator's inquiries, and had largely finished repaying affected customers. It said the decision to issue a warning, rather than take further action, reflected that cooperation alongside the length of the overcharging and delays in reporting it and completing refunds.

TSB found the fault internally in August 2023 and switched off the charge that November, before notifying the FMA verbally in December 2024 and in writing the following February.

Of the $1.73 million in remediation, $1,425,127 covers the fee refunds themselves, $10,404 relates to associated interest and charges, and $299,269 is compensation for the use of that money over time.