ANZ Bank is facing a day in Federal Court after Australia’s financial watchdog has launched legal action against the bank for their alleged faulty banking system and misleading conduct.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has alleged the bank had wrongly charged fees and interest to more than 165,000 credit card accounts between May 2016 and November 2018, based on the incorrect account balance.

“We are concerned that, over a long period of time, ANZ overstated the available funds and balances on credit card accounts, and nonetheless charged fees and interest to customers who relied on this information when making withdrawals,” said ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court.

Court also revealed that while some affected customers were charged $47 in cash advance fees and interest, other individuals were charged thousands of dollars in fees.

“This alleged misconduct is the result of system errors within ANZ and a lack of effort to comprehensively fix these issues. We say that ANZ has been aware of the unlawful charging since at least 2018 and the problem is still occurring today.”

ASIC’s lawsuit accuses the bank of not only engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct but has also breached their Australian Credit Licence requirement that credit activities be engaged efficiently, honestly and fairly.

ASIC has also alleged that ANZ’s misconduct has caused “anguish and inconvenience” to their customers and they “were deprived of a true understanding of the funds that were available to them”.

“ANZ is considering the matters raised by ASIC in its concise statement. ANZ will not be providing further comment given the matter is now before the Court,” the bank said in a statement.

The latest lawsuit comes five months after ASIC launched legal action against ANZ after they found that the bank failed to offer financial benefits to more than half a million of its clients in over two decades.

“These customers were entitled to receive the benefits they signed up for and in many instances paid for. This case is yet another example of a widespread system failure by a major bank impacting thousands of customers,” Court said at the time.

That lawsuit was meant to mark the end of the regulator’s investigations of the bank after they had launched a separate lawsuit a month prior against the bank for allegedly using cleaners, real estate agents and false documents as part of a scheme to grow their mortgage book.