ANZ Bank New Zealand has formally filed an appeal against the High Court ruling that found it breached consumer credit law for around 17,000 mortgage customers, a decision that left the country’s largest bank facing a payout that could reach 125 million dollars.
The bank confirmed late last week that it had filed an appeal of the 4 May summary judgment by Justice Venning, who ruled that ANZ had breached section 22 of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003 by failing to disclose accurate information to mortgage customers who varied their loans between 6 June 2015 and 28 May 2016.
The flaw was a coding error in loan variation letters. Customers received slightly wrong repayment information, which meant they underpaid their mortgages by an average of about 2 dollars a month over the breach period. ANZ identified the error itself, reported it to the Commerce Commission, and has already paid more than 35 million dollars in remediation to affected borrowers.
What turned a clerical mistake into one of the largest single banking liabilities in recent New Zealand history was the way the CCCFA treats a disclosure breach. Under section 99 of the Act as it stood at the time, a lender that fails to meet disclosure obligations is not entitled to recover any costs of borrowing during the period of breach. Justice Venning ordered ANZ to refund the lead representative plaintiff 32,728 dollars and 42 cents, the entire cost of borrowing on that customer’s loan for the breach window. Applied across the full class of around 17,000 customers, the total exposure has been estimated by ANZ at up to 125 million dollars before interest and costs.
ANZ NZ chief executive Antonia Watson said the bank was appealing on the grounds that the High Court had incorrectly applied the law. In a statement released through ANZ’s corporate newsroom, Watson said the bank had always disputed the way the legislation had been read.
We opposed the original claim because we felt strongly that the law was not intended to operate in the way the plaintiffs and the litigation funders suggested, Watson said. We maintain that the potential consequences under the High Court’s interpretation of the law are disproportionate and not aligned with the purpose of the CCCFA or any actual harm caused.
The bank pointed out that it had self-reported the issue, taken accountability and already compensated the borrowers actually affected. The 35 million dollars in remediation it has already paid sits awkwardly against the 125 million dollar potential liability flowing from the court’s reading of the statute.
The appeal will now go to the Court of Appeal. Class members do not need to take any action at this stage and no payments will flow until the appeal is resolved. The team running the action, which is backed by a commercial litigation funder, has told class members through the bankingclassaction.com website that there is nothing for them to do while the appeal works through the courts.
The case has taken on a significance well beyond ANZ itself. A near-identical class action is running against ASB on the same disclosure provisions, and the broader question of how harshly the courts should apply section 99 of the CCCFA has been a live issue for years. The previous Labour government tightened the wider CCCFA regime in 2021 in the wake of concerns about responsible lending, before the National-led coalition rolled back parts of it last year. The disclosure rules at the heart of the ANZ case predate both rounds of reform.
For ANZ Group in Melbourne, the New Zealand subsidiary’s exposure is material but manageable. ANZ Banking Group posted a half-year cash profit of around 3.6 billion Australian dollars in May, and the New Zealand business contributed roughly a third of that. A 125 million dollar charge would be absorbed without threatening the group’s capital position, but it would still be one of the largest single regulatory hits the New Zealand bank has ever taken.
The timing is uncomfortable. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has spent the last fortnight publicly signalling that she is actively considering further taxation of the banking sector, on top of the new prudential levy unveiled at Budget 2026. The class action ruling has handed her critics a fresh data point about how much of the major banks’ profits are flowing offshore to Australian parents, and how thinly the sector has historically been pinged for compliance lapses.
For mortgage customers caught up in the action, the practical effect of the appeal is more waiting. The original judgment did not order payment to the 17,000 class members directly. It awarded the lead plaintiff their borrowing costs and effectively cleared the legal path for the rest of the class to recover theirs. The Court of Appeal hearing will not be scheduled for months, and a Supreme Court reference is possible after that.
Bank watchers expect the case to clarify, one way or the other, whether a technical disclosure breach with negligible financial harm can really wipe out a lender’s right to recover its entire cost of borrowing for the period of the breach. That is the question Justice Venning answered yes to, and it is the question ANZ now wants three Court of Appeal judges to answer no to.
Reporting by the New Zealand Herald and NBR first confirmed that ANZ had moved to the Court of Appeal within the 20 working day filing window.
What do you think, is ANZ right to push the case to the Court of Appeal, or should it accept the ruling and pay out the 17,000 customers? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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