Jane Myers was permanently banned by ASIC after she was found to have given poor advice around the establishment of SMSFs and rollover of client funds from other super accounts, including one instance where a client lost an insurance payout due to her recommendations.
Ms Myers had claimed she was not providing financial product advice as her recommendations had only related to SMSF establishment, the regulator said.
ASIC said Ms Myers’ “serious incompetence and irresponsibility” justified the permanent ban.
Ms Myers was an authorised representative of Spectrum Wealth Advisers, whose director Mark Schroeder was recently banned by the regulator for six years, between 2013 and 2017.
The group’s licence was also cancelled by ASIC in February 2020.
NSW-based Alexander Thomas was also banned from the industry by ASIC for three years, after a review of his client files found he had failed to make reasonable inquiries into, and base all judgements on, his client’s relevant circumstances, and to appropriately scope the advice.
Mr Thomas was an authorised representative of NAB between 2008 and 2017, and of Forsyths Financial Services between 2017 and 2019.
Both advisers have the right to an AAT appeal of their decision.
Myers sounds fair enough but would be interested to hear more detail about the NAB guy; was it serious or just trivial issues that he got hammered over? Likewise, did his manager and compliance officer also get some form of penalty?
Not sure why IFA focus so much of their time writing up these articles on “bad advisers” vs providing much more value adding content for subscribing advisers, especially in this post Hayne & COVID-19 era – probably worth thinking about this IFA!
They just copy and paste it from the asic news release. No actual reporting goes into this lol
Agreed.
Jane Myers stopped being an adviser in June 2016…
Yeah and I can’t even find this Alexander Thomas either?
Permanent ban means she can’t return.
It also means she’ll never have to worry about ASIC scrutiny ever again. ASIC is focused on persecuting qualified, registered, advisers. Advice providers who are not qualified or registered, such as accountants, mortgage brokers, content writers, financial coaches, real estate agents, lawyers, and super fund employees, can give as much dodgy advice as they like, free from expensive regulatory overhead and constant persecution.
It’s funny how your local bookkeeper can give a ROA to a new client about releasing $10k from super, but an Adviser has to go through the whole process and produce a SOA for a new client looking to take the $10k. Thanks ASIC!