The corporate regulator found Mr Robin engaged in “misleading or deceptive” conduct while issuing unsecured fixed interest notes in Protect Ensure to 20 of his clients.
Mr Robin has been a director of Protect Ensure Pty Ltd since 18 April 2006. Protect Ensure was placed into liquidation on 12 June 2015.
An investigation by ASIC found that between July 2013 and December 2014, Mr Robin behaved dishonestly by depositing clients’ monies into an entity associated with the Protect Ensure group, using those funds for personal expenses and making payments to other noteholders.
Mr Robin also failed to provide an information memorandum to clients, and failed to disclose that client funds would be pooled with other monies in the Protect Ensure business, ASIC said.
The regulator added that he failed to lodge accurate annual reports on time; failed to report signficant breaches to ASIC; failed to know the finanical position of Protect Ensure; failed to ensure Protect Ensure had adequate financial resources; and failed to ensure the company complied with the conditions of its AFSL.
“ASIC has determined that Mr Robin is not of good character, making him an unsuitable person to provide financial services. Mr Robin has not maintained the high standards expected of a provider of financial services,” said the regulator.
ASIC deputy chair Peter Kell said Mr Robin’s wrongdoing is “inconsistent with the honesty, integrity, diligence and judgement that is expected and required of those in the industry”.
“ASIC will continue to take action to remove from the industry advisers who breach community trust,” Mr Kell added.
Mr Robin has the right to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review of ASIC’s decision.
It’s not clear if this guy was a Financial Planner or just worked in finance and was dodgy and yet another example of how all things that go bad with money are labelled “rouge financial adviser”…
Whether he was or not, banning is a slap on the wrist, hope he gets sued for every cent he has (or he has hidden) and goes to jail. Gives us all a bad name and no excuse for this type of activity.
We want our profession to have a good name, we need zero tolerance. This is blatant and malicious intent to deceive for personal gain. JAIL HIM.
It seems amazing to me that so many of these “Breaking News” media releases seem to revolve around this honest and corrupt financial planners not honest Risk Insurance Advisors like myself. And yet the blanket of shroud and dishonesty has been thrown across the entire industry and extremely unfair reforms forced upon us last week. I would love to know how many dishonest General Insurance Brokers Mr Trowbridge has come across in his time and why he seems to have such a tainted view of risk insurance advisors?????