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You get the goss with a verdict, a score out of 10, and the sources to check us.

Do we like CommSec?

Online stockbroking and share-trading platform in Australia, run by Commonwealth Securities Ltd.

Our score: 4 out of 10. A big, convenient broker, but a court fined it for overcharging customers and systemic compliance failures. We'd back it cautiously at best.

CommSec is the share-trading arm of Commonwealth Bank, so it's part of one of Australia's biggest banks. Lots of ordinary Aussies use it to buy shares, and it puts out daily market news and podcasts.

The big blot is 2022. ASIC took CommSec and sister broker AUSIEX to court over market integrity and compliance failures. The Federal Court ordered a $20 million penalty for CommSec and $7.1 million for AUSIEX. Customers had been overcharged brokerage fees on more than 120,000 occasions.

The court also ordered an independent expert to oversee a compliance program. CommSec didn't fight the case, and an executive apologised to affected customers. The court found no evidence the contraventions were deliberate.

It wasn't the first run-in. CommSec paid smaller ASIC infringement penalties in 2012 and 2014, and had been before the ASIC Markets Disciplinary Panel on several earlier occasions. That history of repeat slip-ups drags the score down.

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Our take, from what the sources we read say on the day we checked. It can miss things; tap a source to read it.