Tassie couple tells of ANZ nightmare
TASMANIAN farmers Michael and Dimity Hirst lost everything eight years ago when the ANZ Bank foreclosed on nearly $5 million in loans.
Yesterday, the Hirsts, who say ANZ played a role in their troubles, finally received an apology from the banking giant — at the banking Royal Commission.
Mr and Mrs Hirst were in Queensland to tell their story to the commission including how ANZ sought to eject them from their Westbury home two weeks before Christmas in 2013.
“I had a breakdown, we had horses, cats, dogs and four children,” Mrs Hirst said.
After yesterday’s hearing Mr Hirst said the apology from ANZ head of commercial lending Ben Steinberg was amazing.
“We didn’t expect that at all,” he said.
“He said ‘ how about I apologise now, would that be OK?’.”
The couple, originally sheep and beef farmers, invested heavily in farm land and forestry from about 2005.
However, the collapse of woodchip markets and then Gunns Ltd in 2012 left them with unsaleable land and no cashflow to make interest repayments.
Mr Hirst said the couple had been in Brisbane for four days but unsure whether they would be called to give evidence at the commission.
“The Royal Commission has been extremely humbling,” Mrs Hirst said.
“It was overwhelming and we are pleased our story could be heard.
“When you go through financial difficulties like that it is really isolating from your friends and community.
“To know that it is all over now and know that it is out there is quite empowering.
“We can put it in a box and get on with our lives and our children will not have to deal with a couple of stressed-out parents.”
The Hirsts invested in farm land for forestry through Landmark Financial Services, which ANZ took over in 2010.
Mr Hirst, who is the only former Landmark customer to testify at the public hearing, was applauded by other farmers as he left the hearing room.
He said communications uncovered in the commission between Landmark and ANZ were quite an eye opener.
“We knew nothing of these documents and it showed they did due diligence but they did nothing about it,” he said.
Mr Hirst said he hoped the commission would lead to the financial services sector including a human element.
“The cases examined by the commission show that the dollar is the holy grail and nothing else matters and that attitude comes from the top,” he said.
Mr Hirst told the hearing. ANZ had “never once shown any empathy.”
The apology had taken eight years to arrive, he said.
ANZ initially lifted interest rates but eventually wrote off the Hirsts’ $4.88 million remaining debt and paid the former Landmark customers $684,000 in compensation after a former High Court judge Susan Crennan evaluated their case.
THE corporate watchdog has sued beleaguered wealth manager AMP, claiming that its advisers – to snare lucrative commissions – were shunting customers into life insurance policies against their best interests.
In claims, which have not yet been aired at the financial services Royal Commission, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission says AMP failed to prevent its financial planners from churning customers into new life insurance policies unnecessarily.
ASIC alleges financial planners engaged in “rewriting conduct”. It says the planners gave customers advice whereby they cancelled their existing life insurance policies, only to take out similar replacement policies through new applications rather than transfers. By doing this, financial planners stood to receive larger bonuses than they would have under a simple transfer. At the same time, customers were exposed to “unnecessarily to underwriting and associated risks”, the watchdog says.
ASIC has launched civil proceedings against AMP in the Federal Court.
AMP is alleged to have known, or ought to have known, about this behaviour by July 2013, ASIC says. It says AMP did not take reasonable steps to deal with the conduct in the two years to the end of June 2015.
“ASIC alleges that this type of advice was inappropriate, and that the financial planners failed to act in the best interests of the clients,” the regulator said in a statement yesterday.
The case, which will rely on the client files of various AMP financial planners, will have a directions hearing on July 27.