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The new year has kicked off in Australia with new class actions filed against financial institutions in a sign that plaintiffs law firms will remain active in 2020.

Shine Lawyers has launched a class action against Colonial First State, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's wealth division, claiming it overcharged more than $700,000 for life insurance.

Another plaintiffs firm, Maurice Blackburn, filed a class action against the National Australia Bank's wealth arms, alleging they kept as many as 330,000 customers in investment products with high fees and poor performance.

The two actions are the latest in a string of class actions arising from revelations from 2018's unprecedented year-long government inquiry into misconduct in the country's banking and financial services sector.

As many as 20 class actions have come out of revelations from the Hayne Royal Commission, as it was known. But even when this source of actions comes to an end, Justin McDonnell, a litigation and dispute resolution partner at King & Wood Mallesons, said he expects Australia's more invigorated regulators will provide a spur for new actions.

"What you'll find in 2020 is that post the Hayne Royal Commission into banking, you've got regulators such as [the Australian Securities and Investments Commission] and [the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority] actively going out and pursuing and chasing large corporates," he said.

"Class action funders and plaintiff law firms will follow them because … the regulator will go through a lot of the steps of examining people and looking at documents."

Several important questions about class actions were resolved by Australian courts last year and these decisions will be a major factor in the class action environment in 2020.

One such decision was the High Court ban on common fund orders.

A common fund order obliges all group members in a class action to pay a share of a litigation funder's commission out of the proceeds, regardless of whether or not they have signed an agreement with the funder and the firm bringing the action.

They have become commonplace since the Federal Court held in 2016 that it had the power to grant common fund orders. Without a common fund order, litigation funders and plaintiffs firms previously had to go through the expensive exercise of a bookbuild to sign up enough plaintiffs to ensure they have a viable case.

But Chris Pagent, a partner at local "big six" firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth, said there is "some lingering doubt about the full reach of the High Court's decision."

"Questions arise about whether the High Court's decision precludes common fund borders completely or merely whether it precludes such orders if sought at an early stage in the litigation, or at least before there has been a settlement or a judgment," he said.

In fact, it was only two days after last December's High Court ruling that a judge in a lower court raised similar questions.

Federal Court Judge Jonathan Beach, who is overseeing the approval process for a proposed A$49.7 million ($33.4 million) settlement of two shareholder class actions against baby food maker Bellamy's, said the High Court had not addressed whether common fund orders could be made after a settlement deed had been drafted.

Should common funder orders remain altogether impermissible, then Pagent said the number of class actions is unlikely to fall, but "we are going to see fewer people fight over the right to sue those defendants," because of the expense of conducting a bookbuild.

"Plenty of law firms won't be racing off to court as quickly," he said.

He expects there also would be fewer large-scale consumer class actions, where many defendants each seek relatively small amounts, because bookbuilds would not be economical.

Michael Mills, a commercial litigation and dispute resolution partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in Sydney, said litigation funders have been highly active in backing class actions in Australia, but added that last year's High Court decision has removed much of the certainty over returns that funders had been able to rely on. He questions whether some of the smaller funders with less financial backing will remain in the market.

However, he pointed out that until three years ago, all class actions in Australia involved a bookbuild, so he doesn't expect a reduction in the number.

Another key development from last year that will loom large in 2020 is the introduction of legislation by the state of Victoria to allow firms to charge contingency fees. The legislation is yet to be passed by Parliament, but this looks likely, given the Andrews Labor government's large number of seats.

"That will no doubt also lead to a spike, I suspect, in class actions, and across the full range: products, labor, shareholders and probably some innovative areas where the class action scene hasn't probably even touched on yet," Mills said.

Ruth Overington, a partner advising on class action defenses at Anglo-Australian law firm Herbert Smith Freehills, said she expects the change would make Victoria a more attractive destination in which to file class actions and would have an effect similar to common fund orders.

"As part of that proposal, the contingency fee order would apply across the group," she said. "So all group members would need to pay the contingency fee regardless of whether they had signed up to that law firm."

While some business leaders are claiming there has been "an explosion" in class actions in Australia, professor Vince Morabito of the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University in Melbourne dismisses this as a myth.

In the 12 months ended in June 2019, some 59 class actions were filed—up from 56 the year before, Morabito's research shows. While this is up from the annual average of 23 class actions since 1992, Morabito points out that there are far fewer class actions filed than in other jurisdictions such as Israel, Quebec and Ontario.