Consumer group lauds ANZ’s move to settle with Storm Financial clients
With more banks expressing willingness to settle the Storm Financial questions left behind by its collapse in 2008, a consumer group also expressed happiness that a resolution for investors affected by the meltdown may finally be in sight.
Storm Investor Consumer Action Group said on Monday that it is happy to see that Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) followed the lead of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and commenced negotiations for a resolution scheme with its clients hit by the Storm Financial failure.
Group spokesman Mark Weir said that the fact remains that most investors who saw their savings wiped out when the Queensland-based company went under during the height of the global financial crisis would never recover from their financial ruins.
However, Mr Weir said that it was comforting to see that banks involved in the financial issue have started facing up on their responsibilities, adding that "we've come a fair way since then and we have to be grateful for that."
He said that the decision of the banks to initiate talks with their distressed depositors was a welcome relief for these people, who he said may have been forced to accept concessions "in regard to interest rates on loans and so forth."
Mr Weir noted that while only a handful of ANZ customers were affected by the Storm Financial collapse, as compared to the thousand CBA customers, they too suffered the same amount of hardships that the financial ruin had delivered.
He conceded that these ANZ clients may not have the same stake as against with the majority who were hard hit by the Storm Financial collapse but the consequences were quite the same for most investors, in which "they've been having their income streams destroyed when their investments were sold at that crucial time in 2008 and have been struggling to service their investment loans."