Westpac has paid back more than $50 million to staff after years of underpayment, the Fair Work Ombudsman has said.

The underpayments, which occurred over an 11-year period, were primarily caused by failures in Westpac's systems, governance processes, and compliance oversight, the ombudsman said.

Further shortcomings included inadequate record-keeping, reliance on systems requiring manual adjustments, and input errors.

Employees were underpaid their casual loading and minimum wages for ordinary hours, allowances such as for higher duties and weekend penalties, termination payments, leave payments and more.

To date, Westpac has back-paid a total of more than $50.26 million, plus almost $9 million in interest and applicable superannuation, to nearly 47,000 current and former staff who we

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