ING investors turn on ANZ

Disgruntled investors in two frozen ING investment funds make their point outside an ANZ branch. Photo / Bay of Plenty Times

The ANZ Bank says a "substantial" number of the 2700 investors it placed in ING's frozen structured credit funds have lodged official complaints, but it will not give an exact figure.

The bank gave its investors until July 31 to make a formal complaint in order to be eligible for additional compensation over and above the settlement offer made by ING.

More than 13,000 investors were given until July 13 to accept the settlement offer made by ING on the Diversified Yield Fund and Regular Income Fund and 99 per cent took it up.

A condition of the offer was that investors make no further complaints or take or benefit from any legal action in relation to the funds.

But ANZ investors were given until the end of the month to make a complaint, after the bank admitted it had mis-sold the funds to some investors.

Two weeks ago the Banking Ombudsman said she had received more than 500 complaints about the ANZ.

Of those, 195 had not been investigated, 197 were being investigated and 129 had been completed. Of those completed, 102 were settled all or partially in favour of the investor.

A condition of the extended deadline was that investors had to sign a statutory declaration in the presence of a lawyer or justice of the peace in order for the complaint to be accepted, including those who had already complained to the Ombudsman or were already having their case investigated.

A spokeswoman for ANZ said a substantial number of ANZ customers had taken up the offer of having their investment file reviewed by ANZ.

The bank was reviewing each customer's position on a case-by-case basis.

But she said the bank did not have exact numbers and would not comment further on it.

Last week Deputy Banking Ombudsman Susan Taylor said that as far as she was aware all of those investors where investigations were already taking place had filed the additional complaint form.

"We haven't had to close a file because of that."

She was aware a lot of notices had been filed directly with the bank but the office was still waiting to hear back from the bank on the final figure.

Taylor said she was concerned some investors might have missed the deadline because they did not receive the letter from the ANZ telling them about it and the additional procedure.

Her office had received a number of calls from investors in the past couple of weeks and had alerted the bank to the problem.

Taylor said it seemed some investors no longer with the ANZ Bank had not received the letter and that included cases where the original investor had died and it was their estate which was owed money.

She was hoping the bank would give investors some leeway in regard to the deadline.

Taylor said the Ombudsman planned to get in touch with the bank in the next few days as the office needed to know whether to take on extra staff to handle the complaints.

It already had four full-time staff and two part-time staff working on cases, and without adding any further complaints to the 200 it had on file, it would be at least another six months.

ING DEAL

* 13,000 investors in ING's frozen Diversified Yield and Regular Income Funds
* 99 per cent have taken up ING's settlement offer
* 2700 investors went through the ANZ Bank
* July 31 - These investors had until then to make a formal complaint in addition to the settlement - the bank says a "substantial" number have