AustralianSuper fined $17 million for failure to merge duplicate accounts

(Reuters) - AustralianSuper, the country's largest pension fund, was fined A$27 million ($17.3 million) after a court found it had failed to identify and merge duplicate member accounts, the corporate watchdog said on Friday.

The firm, which has over 3.5 million members and A$365 billion in assets, did not have adequate procedures in place to the merge the identical accounts of around 90,700 members between July 2013 and March 2023, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said.

As a result, the affected members incurred about A$69 million in losses as they paid multiple sets of administration fees and insurance premiums, ASIC said.

"We found this mistake, we reported it, we apologised to impacted members, we compensated them, and we've improved our processes to prevent this happening again," AustralianSuper Chief Executive Paul Schroder said in a statement.

AustralianSuper said that a provision was made for an the expected penalty in the 2023-2024 financial year accounts, and member administration fees have not been increased to cover it.

In December 2021, AustralianSuper reported a potential failure to comply with the ASIC's obligations to consolidate duplicate accounts and in September 2023, the regulator initiated a lawsuit against the pension fund.

($1 = 1.5627 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Sherin Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Sonia Cheema)

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