The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has launched six court cases against Westpac for alleged, widespread compliance failures that affected thousands of deceased consumers.

Having admitted to the allegations in all the lawsuits, the bank has agreed to compensate around $80 million to the estates of its affected customers.

In addition to the compensation payment, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is also seeking orders from the Federal Court for the bank to be fined $113 million.

Westpac has agreed to pay these penalties. However, these orders will need to be approved by the court.

The bank's list of wrongdoing includes charging fees to its dead customers, double-charging insurance policies and failing to adequately disclose its fees to financial advice customers.

"It is unprecedented for ASIC to file multiple proceedings against the same respondent at the same time," ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court said.

Charging dead people and other breaches

The bank admitted that, over a decade, it had charged in excess of $10 million worth of advice fees to more than 11,000 customers for financial advice, even though they had already died.

Another failure was Westpac sending "duplicate insurance policies" to more than 7,000 customers for the same property at the same time. This resulted in some customers paying for two or more policies unnecessarily.

Westpac was also accused of seeking payments from 329 customers for premiums, even though they had not consented to entering into insurance policies.

The regulator also took issue with the bank's subsidiary, BT Funds Management, charging its members insurance premiums that included commission payments.

That was despite the fact commissions were banned under the Future of Financial Advice legislation.

BT Funds is remediating in excess of $12 million to more then 8,000 affected members who were wrongly charged.

Furthermore, ASIC claims that at least 25,000 customers of BT Financial Advice, Magnitude and Securitor — Westpac licensees that are no longer operating — were ripped off by more than $7 million. This amount relates to "contribution fees for financial advice" that were not adequately disclosed.

The corporate watchdog also accused Westpac of allowing around 21,000 deregistered company accounts to remain open.

An alleged problem was that Westpac continued to charge fees on those accounts and allowed funds to be withdrawn from these accounts. However, those fees should have been transferred to ASIC or the Commonwealth.

ASIC also alleges that Westpac sold consumer credit card and flexi-loan debt to debt purchasers with the wrong interest rates.

These debt onsale rates were higher than what Westpac was contractually allowed to charge, which led to more than 16,000 customers, who were "likely to be in financial distress", being overcharged.

All up, ASIC is taking action against Westpac and its following divisions: Advance Asset Management, Asgard Capital Management, BT Funds Management, BT Funds Management No. 2, BT Portfolio Services, Securitor Financial Group and Magnitude Group.

'Poor compliance culture' at Westpac

"The conduct and breaches alleged in these proceedings caused widespread consumer harm and ranged across Westpac’s everyday banking, financial advice, superannuation and insurance businesses," Ms Court said.

A "common aspect" of these matters has been "poor systems, poor processes and poor governance", which suggests as "overall poor compliance culture within Westpac at the relevant time", the deputy chair said.

"Customers are entitled to have trust and confidence in Westpac being able to deliver what it promises, without suffering financial harm. Westpac must urgently improve its systems and culture to ensure these systemic failures do not continue."

Westpac's chief executive Peter King said his bank had "fallen short of our standards and the standards our customers expect of us".

"The issues raised in these matters should not have occurred, and our processes, systems and monitoring should have been better. We are putting things right and unreservedly apologise to our customers.

He also said the bank has "cooperated with ASIC through the investigations and the process to get to this resolution today”.

“This outcome is an important step forward for us as we continue to fix issues and build stronger risk foundations."