Macquarie Bank shuts down new car lending

The bank said that this would not impact existing customers who have a car loan and that it would continue to service customers for the duration of their loan.

Macquarie Bank revealed earlier this week (22 April) that its car loan offerings were being removed so that the bank could focus on delivering core home loans and deposit products.

Macquarie’s head of personal banking Ben Perham said: “This decision will enable us to further prioritise the growth of our home loan and deposit offerings.

“Our leading digital experiences for those products are built on best-in-class technology platforms and we see significant opportunity to continue investing in them to attract more customers to Macquarie.”

Final deadlines for car loan applications closed on 24 April for the broker and novated leasing channel and, if approved, will need to be settled before 17 May. Applications closed for the direct channel on 22 April.

The announcement comes as Agile Market Intelligence’s latest Broker Pulse survey revealed that Macquarie Bank had record low turnaround times, falling to less than a day in March, down from two days in February and January.

The non-major bank was also the most commonly used lender among brokers, with 39 per cent of respondents reporting that they had submitted loans to Macquarie. Its three-month satisfaction rating among brokers was also at 97 per cent.

Macquarie fined $10m penalty for ineffective controls

In recent news, Macquarie Bank was ordered by the Federal Court to pay a $10 million fine after being found to have ineffective controls to detect and prevent unauthorised fee transactions conducted by third parties, such as financial advisers, on certain accounts.

The case was brought to the Federal Court by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), which alleged that the bank allowed its customers to give third parties different levels of authority to transact on their accounts, including enabling a limited authority to withdraw the third party’s fees.

The case investigated, in particular, the fact that former financial adviser Ross Hopkins was able to fraudulently withdraw approximately $2.9 million from his customers’ accounts across 167 unauthorised transactions on 13 of his clients’ cash management accounts via Macquarie’s bulk transaction system.

The court ruled that Macquarie failed to implement effective controls between 1 May 2016 and 15 January 2020 to determine if third-party bulk transactions on customer accounts were actually for fees.

[Related: Bank turnarounds accelerate: Broker Pulse]