(Bloomberg) -- Danske Bank A/S’s financial regulator says it expects its board to decide soon whether to report the lender to police for overcharging retail investors.
Jesper Berg, the director general of the Financial Supervisory Authority in Copenhagen, said that the FSA’s board “will decide in the late summer months.”
“When, we can’t say because we keep our meetings confidential, and secondly the board may ask for other relevant information,” Berg said by phone last week.
Danske fired one of its top executives in June, after finding that his unit had overcharged tens of thousands of retail customers using the bank’s Flexinvest Fri investment platform. Denmark’s biggest bank, which is being investigated separately for its role in a vast money laundering scandal, said at the time that it plans to repay about $60 million in compensation. It also said it was expecting “justified and severe criticism from the FSA.”
The FSA has sent a report to its board detailing the matter, but can’t make any final decision on whether to involve the police. “At the end of the day, it’s the board that decides and represents the view of the FSA when it comes to police reporting,” Berg said.
The agency is also trying to find out whether other Danish banks overcharged their retail investment clients, as they look for ways to generate revenue in a climate of historically low interest rates.
“As we speak we are getting reports in from other banks on their numbers, but we don’t know,” Berg said. “We haven’t looked into them yet.”
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