Macquarie pays clients $11m in compensation

At Macquarie's annual general meeting in Sydney this week, chairman Kevin McCann said that to date, approximately $11 million in compensation had been paid to clients.

The update follows Macquarie Investment Management's announcing the group would be refunding more than $5.5 million to 2,300 clients following an investigation by ASIC.

As part of the client remediation process, Macquarie Private Wealth wrote to approximately 190,000 current and former clients inviting them to seek a file review, Mr McCann said.

"The Board has paid close attention to implementation of the enforceable undertaking and the remediation of clients," he said.

"In addition, the comprehensiveness of our client remediation process has received favourable comment in public forums by a number of parties, including ASIC."

Mr McCann also highlighted that Macquarie has seen an increase in compliance costs.

"Macquarie is regulated by approximately 190 authorities in 28 jurisdictions," he said. "This increased regulatory focus has resulted in our direct cost of compliance quadrupling over the past four years to approximately $413 million – and we expect this trend to continue."