Comment: Late payment fee fairness gets wider audience

The implications of yesterday's ruling by the Full Court of the Federal Court as to what is reasonable when it comes to imposing late payment charges are likely to be widely applied.

The Full Court - three senior judges - said that the trial judge stated the principles correctly but did not apply them to late payment fees in a way that reflected the business costs a large company incurs from being paid late - the extra riskiness, regulatory capital, provisions for losses and other operational costs.

While this is good news, obviously, for ANZ there is a flow-on to many other organisations outside the banking sector - large corporations in industries removed from financial services that collect payments for supply of services, such as energy companies, telcos and other utilities will be especially interested in late payment fees.

As one pundit noted, the law firms are starting "a bookbuild" of customers in other industries, presumably in preparation for further legal challenges to fees and charges. "Not now" would be the warning from the Federal Court.

The ramifications are likely to stretch across the Tasman, as well, where other class actions are running against - primarily - the four subsidiaries of the Big Four Australian banks.

So far, word on the fate of those actions has not emerged.