Glitch Sends Money to Wrong People

Uh-oh!

A glitch that affected an online brokerage firm has diverted dividends to the wrong people. According to Commonwealth Bank, about 9,000 CommSec customers were affected by the glitch.

The foul-up happened at the end of August and has caused dividends of shares to be transferred from CommSec’s trading accounts to its customers’ cash account. The dividends of shares should have been transferred to a nominated account.

Commonwealth Bank said it would provide support to customers to help them revert to the original plan. CBA also said that CommSec has been communicating with its customers to notify them of the error and to provide assistance to them.

CBA, however, said it has not identified the root cause of the glitch. Some say it was because of a delay in following the instructions of its customers to transfer the dividends to their CommSec cash accounts.

According to one CommSec depositor, he never gave instructions to change the account that his dividends are deposited into. The depositor said he has used the same account for many years when it comes to crediting his dividends.

He, however, received an email from CommSec last August, indicating that he switched his account. This was followed by another email that he does not need to do anything to correct the problem.

The depositor started getting worried he received another email from CommSec, saying that a system upgrade has issued the instruction that he is unsubscribing from its Dividend Direction Service. The email also reiterated that the depositor is not required to take any action.