OnePath and Cigna pinged by FMA

The breaches relate to misleading claims made by the ANZ bank from 2014 to 2018 when issuing credit card statements to a group of customers who had credit card replacement insurance (CCRI) policies with Cigna and OnePath.

Last year ANZ was fined $280,000 in the High Court after admitting two civil causes of action brought by the FMA: that it had issued duplicate CCRI policies and charged extra premiums to some customers, claiming they would receive extra benefits when that wasn’t the case; and that ANZ had issued, and failed to cancel, CCRI policies to customers who were ineligible because of their age.  All up, 307 customers were affected.

Although it became aware of the problems in late 2017/early 2018, ANZ failed to disclose the matter to the FMA and Reserve Bank when the regulators were doing a culture and conduct review of retail banks in May/June 2018. ANZ did not notify the FMA until June 2019.

OnePath and Cigna were the insurers of many of the CCRI policies and both notified the FMA during its life insurance and culture and conduct review.