The statement sets out facts that the parties have agreed are not to be disputed. Provision has been made for the parties to file any further evidence with the Court and for submissions on liability and penalty.
ASIC alleges that NULIS Nominees and MLC Nominees misled members of the MLC MasterKey Super products, as well as charging $33 million in plan service fees from 220,000 no-adviser members of MLC MasterKey Business and MLC MasterKey Personal Super.
ASIC also alleges that NAB deducted approximately $67 million in plan service fees from 300,000 members of MLC MasterKey Personal Super where plan advisers were not required to provide services or members did not receive services.
A NAB spokesperson told ifa that NULIS, the trustee, stopped deducting plan service fees from MLC MasterKey Personal Super member accounts on 30 September 2018 and MasterKey Business Super accounts on 30 November 2018.
ASIC seeks declarations of contravention and civil penalty from the Federal Court.
Correction: An earlier version of this article reported that ASIC had begun proceedings today. That was incorrect. Proceedings began in September 2018. This article also stated that ASIC had sought damages of $850 million. That figure was overall remediation costs for investigations into fees for no service across the industry.
The imbalance and bias that ASIC are delivering toward retail super funds is blindingly obvious.
Why on earth isn’t the focus balanced in relation to the fees charged by Industry Funds to every single member that are specifically listed as advice fees and incorporated within the admin fees but are only there in the event a member was to contact their fund and actually receive over the phone intra-fund advice.
If a member does not contact their fund for any advice the fee is still levied.
That is clearly a fee charged for no advice or instruction received and even then, it is only advice relevant to that member’s account and that members super fund, not personal advice and cannot be deemed to meet the best interest duty.
The discrimination shown by the regulator is unjust,unfair and unacceptable.
Josh Frydenberg needs to step up and demand that ASIC investigate all these funds practices, not just cherry picking the retail super space.
Assume we will see ASIC do the same to industry & union funds who charge fees on all members to subsidise advice?
ASIC is corrupt.
These advisers, and the Trustees who shared the fees, were all in NABs adviser fleet or controlled in NABs fully owned AFSLs. I suspect very few IFA advisers in non-bank AFSLs were using these or similar products, but we get to bear the odium.
Hold on. Wasn’t the ‘offer’ of a service good enough? ( and maybe a birthday card)
Sarcasm intended
Still waiting for ASIC to commenced action against Industry funds for charging fees for no service through Intra fund advice and misleading people by adding this into the admin fee.