The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has commenced civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court against ANZ alleging the bank incorrectly charged more than A$50 million in periodic payment fees between 2003 and 2016. At the heart of ASIC's action is the allegation that ANZ continued to charge its customers fees for periodic payments between their own accounts during the 2003-2016 period, despite knowing this was a breach of terms with its customers. In court documents and via a media release, ASIC has asserted that on "at least 1,340,087 occasions", between August 2003 and 23 February 2016, ANZ charged transaction fees and non-payment fees for periodical payments between accounts in the same name, rather than for payments to third parties. "Transaction fees [of up to $4]were charged when a periodical payment was successful, and non-payment fees [of up to $45] were charged when a periodical payment could not be made due to insufficient funds in the customer's account," ASIC stated.ASIC has estimated the total gross loss to customers between 1 January 2008 and 23 February 2016 alone was in excess of $50 million. Of this, ANZ has paid approximately $28 million in remediation to customers to date. The action is being taken, in part, ASIC contends, as, although ANZ first became aware in July 2011 that it was not entitled to charge these fees, the bank did not:•    provide written notification of the existence of a possible issue in relation to the fees to ASIC until 14 February 2014;•    commence notifying affected customers about the issue until at least 23 September 2015;•    change its terms and conditions to permit the charging of the fees until 23 February 2016; and•    commence remediation payments over these unlawfully charged fees until August 2016.For its part, ANZ has previously stated - in September last year - that it was refunding "around 390,000 accounts in relation to unclear fee disclosures for certain periodical payments". The bank estimated that, for the majority of impacted accounts, the fee refunds are below $50.  Fred Ohlsson, then ANZ group executive for Australia said: "We proactively reported this matter to ASIC and have been working hard to ensure customers are repaid as soon as possible. We've already begun making payments to our customers and expect all customers will be refunded by the end of September."None of this impressed a newly energised ASIC, which stated in documents published yesterday, that in September 2018 ANZ contacted it to advise that information previously provided over the wrongly levied fees was incomplete, leading the corporate regulator to commence an investigation a month later.That has culminated in the new Federal Court action.In Concise Statement of its key arguments, lodged yesterday by the Australian Government Solicitor, ASIC explained that due to ANZ's poor record keeping it had been unable to precisely quantify the value of the fees incorrectly charged by ANZ, other than "it is likely to have significantly exceeded $35 million". The same document noted that ANZ has retained profits derived from the imposition of