The Co-operative Bank will be paying an agreed penalty of $2.482m, in line with the High Court’s order relating to its previously admitted historical breaches of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA).
The Co-operative Bank self-reported its internal investigation of the matter to the Commerce Commission in December 2021 and has co-operated fully throughout the Commission’s subsequent investigation. The Commerce Commission filed civil proceedings in the High Court in November 2025, and the Bank has admitted the breaches.
The Co‑operative Bank has completed a remediation programme to address these historical compliance issues which meant that some customers, generally up to November 2021, were charged higher fees than the costs that the Bank could justify based on cost-modelling undertaken in 2021 and 2022.
The Bank has remediated 48,249 impacted customers back to June 2015, returning $7.2m in overcharged fees and a use-of-money payment.
Mark Wilkshire, Chief Executive Officer of The Co‑operative Bank, said:“We apologise to all impacted customers. While it’s disappointing that we didn’t get it right the first time, we own our mistakes. We identified the issue ourselves, reported it to the Commerce Commission, and proactively remediated customers. We’ve previously reported the issue to our customer-owners in our Annual Reports and at AGMs.”
An allowance for the penalty and remediation was made in the 2025 financial year and is not expected to impact the Bank’s financial results for the year ending 31 March 2026.