Govt says final Mascot refund late but all investors to be paid

Photo / Sarah Ivey

The Crown is still waiting to make a final payment to some investors in Mascot Finance - more than a year after it collapsed.

Treasury yesterday revealed it had paid out $79.1 million to investors of Government-guaranteed finance companies. Mascot was the first company to trigger the scheme in March last year and remains the largest.

So far $69.4 million has been paid out to Mascot investors but 0.2 per cent of investors, or about a dozen, remain unpaid. A Treasury spokesman could not say why some investors remained unpaid but the Mascot payout was expected to reach 100 per cent.

There was no cut-off point built into the scheme but the extended guarantee scheme, which rolls over on October 12, had the provision for a cut-off to be placed on a company, the spokesman said. That would stop people from applying for the money for an unlimited time after a guaranteed company had collapsed.

All investors in Strata Finance, which collapsed in April last year, had received their money and about one third of the money owed to Vision Securities' depositors, which collapsed in April this year, had been paid out.

The spokesman said more than 90 per cent of investors in Vision Securities had now received a claim form from the Crown. Three other finance companies which collapsed in May and July are still in the early stages of the claim process. A further $39.6 million is still to be paid out.

Treasury changed its process after Mascot and Strata, moving away from a manual process that couldn't easily be scaled up or down.

Treasury deputy secretary financial operations Philip Combes said the new process involved several steps of information-gathering and confirmation "which when people respond promptly ... then the repayment process is prompt".

Making progress

* $79.1 million paid out so far

* $39.6 million still to be paid