According to an Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) statement on Wednesday, the review further found that Mr Allen provided advice that was not suitable for his clients’ interests, and made false or misleading statements, leading to the ban.
Moreover, it was found that, when providing advice to clients, Mr Allen failed to:
- Make reasonable enquiries to obtain complete and accurate information when certain aspects of a client’s situation were incomplete or inaccurate;
- Reasonably consider a client’s insurance options when recommending a client consolidate their superannuation. Mr Allen did not provide a reasonable assessment of the client’s existing insurance, or consider whether there would be insurance consequences for rolling over the client’s superannuation which may have resulted in them being uninsured for a period; and
- Appropriately scope the superannuation advice to include insurance. Such a limited scope resulted in an insufficient assessment of whether the benefits achieved from rolling over a client’s superannuation would outweigh the disadvantages from the loss of the insurance.
Additionally, Mr Allen’s statement of advice documents, provided to clients, contained product comparison tables that were deemed false or misleading by ASIC. Upon comparison of the clients’ superannuation products, Mr Allen understated the potential insurance costs, despite having the knowledge that the insurance premiums would likely increase after providing insurance advice, the corporate regulator said.
The banning order took effect from 15 March 2022.
Mr Allen sought a review of ASIC’s decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on 6 April 2022. The application for review was withdrawn on 6 February 2023.
“Mr Allen did not provide a reasonable assessment of the client’s existing insurance, or consider whether there would be insurance consequences for rolling over the client’s superannuation which may have resulted in them being uninsured for a period”
*Cough* Cough * – Mr Barefoot Investor telling everyone to roll into HostPlus. All you had to do was check the social media groups to see people complaining of losing their insurances or being declined by hostplus when apply for cover.
Probably why there is a note in the newspaper claiming an “indefinite period of leave”…
Its hard to see how this “layered advice strategy” differs in any meaningful way from the “advice” that super funds would be able to provide under QAR
He has provided an SOA already done more then superannuation fund advisers will do under QAR
Interesting to see why this wasn’t the outcome when Industry funds failed to meet BID in over 50% of cases, Im sure there was plenty of rollover advice broadly excluding risk – but an IFA gets banned. Something is pretty rotten in Australia
Interesting to see if this case would pass the Best (efforts) Advice test recoomend by Levy’s QAR.
No chance it would. Nor should it. This is what asic are slowly weeding out with those who sort refuse in self licenced space.