Australia's Commonwealth Bank to book compliance costs of $216 million in first half

(Reuters) - Commonwealth Bank of Australia <CBA.AX> said on Tuesday that it would book charges of A$300 million (170 million pounds/$216 million) that would be reflected in its first-half results ending December.

The charges include a higher-than-expected compliance cost of A$100 million related to a quasi-judicial inquiry into Australia's financial sector, the bank said in a statement.

The remaining costs are related to a remediation program adopted for its demerged wealth management arm, it added.

Earlier this year, CBA said it would spin off its wealth management and mortgage broking arms into a separately listed new company called CFS Group, inclusive of its Colonial First State Global Asset Management (CFSGAM) business.

CBA, Australia's biggest bank, is due to report first-half results for fiscal 2019 on Feb. 6.

Shares of the lender have been hammered in 2018, on track for their biggest drop in a decade, by damaging revelations at the Royal Commission that it wrongfully withdrew "advice fees" from dead people's accounts and mistakenly double charged interest to thousands of business customers.

(Reporting By Rushil Dutta in Bengaluru; Editing by Himani Sarkar)