Macquarie to refund $5.5 million over platform errors
Macquarie Investment Management will provide $5.5 million in refunds to 2300 clients as a result of errors made through its Macquarie Wrap platform over 13 years from 2001 to 2014.
Macquarie reported the errors to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) which took place on its eight versions of its white labelled Wrap Super and Pension and Wrap IDPS products.
The errors included failing to apply sufficient tax credits to the GST portion of client fees and charging administration fees which exceeded the maximum disclosed in the product offering documents.
ASIC said that after reporting the errors Macquarie had appointed Deloitte as an independent third party to assess the controls and processes around the remediation and compensation arrangements.
Deloitte will work to ensure that all affected clients are identified and appropriately compensated and that Macquarie's controls and processes are adequate to prevent a similar error occurring in future.
According to ASIC Deloitte's review of Macquarie's process had found a third error relating to an administration fee listed in an offering document with all three errors having been rectified.
The refund payments from Macquarie, which will include interest, will begin to be paid to clients from today onwards with former clients to be contacted by Macquarie to discuss refund arrangements.
The white labelled products were offered through Macquarie Equities, Commonwealth Securities, Commonwealth Private, Perks Wealth Management, Optimus Financial, FuturePlus Financial Services, Capital Partners Consulting, Symes Warne and Associates.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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