ANZ cans bonuses in shake-up

ANZ has vowed to clean up its financial planning unit by cutting sales bonuses for advisers and sacking any who fail two advice audits.

The bank declared it will remove all sales incentives from its financial planning bonus structures, improve employee education standards and customer remediation, and remove planners who provide inappropriate advice.

“Financial advice is an important part of the services we offer but it’s also an area where we’ve failed some of our customers,” ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott said.

Last month the banking royal commission heard ANZ offered large bonuses to recruit financial planners to the bank so it could reap lucrative commissions from their client lists.

The commission heard that in one instance ANZ offered planner John Doyle a whopping $150,000 to join the bank. It heard Mr Doyle gave inappropriate advice on numerous occasions and was given the lowest possible rating in an ANZ audit of his work.

The commission heard ANZ calculated that 222 of Mr Doyle’s clients would require a total of $766,000 in compensation for bad financial advice.