The action to be filed in the Federal Court will claim that AMP Financial Planning through its authorised representative and companies breached its fiduciary and statutory duties to an estimated 100,000 clients by failing to provide objective financial advice, failing consumers’ best interests.
The firm has alleged advisers employed by Charter and Hillross received commissions and other incentives to recommend insurance through AMP Life.
Shine Lawyers will further claim that AMP Life was in knowing receipt of gains made by the sale of inflated insurance by the AMP financial advice licensees and their authorised representatives.
At this stage, Shine has said it is in the midst of investigating the charges, but it is set to “imminently” file the claim.
The launch will take place following the wealth giant being freshly hit with a $5.18 million fine for failing to prevent its advisers from conducting insurance churn.
AMP’s Financial Planning Association has also just merged with Hillross Advisers Association, forming The Advisers Association, a body to represent both licensees. Members voted for the amalgamation at annual general meetings last week.
Speaking on the class action, Shine’s head of litigation and loss recovery Jan Saddler said the advisers recommended AMP policies despite knowing their clients could obtain equivalent and better insurance with lower premiums through other providers.
“AMP has encouraged and incentivised its financial advisers to prioritise personal gain above their professional obligations,” Ms Saddler said.
“The clients, who should have been AMP’s primary concern, have been financially disadvantaged as a result. It’s unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of Australians who thought they were getting objective financial advice have instead been ripped off.
“AMP Financial Planning and its authorised representatives have breached the trust of clients who relied on their advice to make decisions about their personal insurances.”
She added that clients slugged with excessive premiums deserve to be compensated.
Consumers are being called to participate if they obtained an MP Flexible Lifetime Policy, which includes death, TPD, trauma, income protection and business protection insurance, from 2013 on the recommendation of AMP Financial Planning, Charter Financial Planning and Hillross Financial Planning.
The class action is being funded by Woodsford Litigation Funding.
Law and Law firms is a business obsessed with money and nothing else.
Justice is simply the marketing tool used to drive massive legal wins and therefore massive pay days to the firm.
They are the worst profession on the face of the planet.
They pretend to care on the basis of principle of law.
They only care for the principle of money.
Righteous leeches with no conscience and no morals hiding behind a ” profession “.
Stop your sooking!
I’d like to know what these incentives are.. we’re an exiting charter practice but in 6 years I can’t remember a single time we were given any incentive, benefit or even a coffee mug to write AMP product. The apl had every product provider except for BT and ClearView. We got a blanket exemption for Bt and one off approvals for clearview and never had a challenge to our reason for using a non. Apl insurer.
I have no doubt these sorts of things existed in the past though.
Is that the sound of an ambulance I heard? I am sure a certain breed of lawyer associates that with the smell of money (amazing sense of scent, considering how bad scum smells)
WBC FS was previously a single APL for insurance… BID not found
So is this number 4 Class Action or number 5?
So Shine Lawyers are mounting a class action against AMP advisers for recommending product that provided a commission and they will take the lion’s share of the claim as commission.What a farce ! And financial advisers are required to sit an ethical exam ??
AMP will never loose this case if it ever gets to court its too speculative
Maybe learn to spell?
Members of the FPA’s professional partner program in trouble again. Yikes…I would not like to be represented by, or be a FPA member now, with this going on.
I was talking to a car salesman the other day and he indicated that one of the best way to sell a new car was to inflate the notional trade in value for the existing vehicle. Why is that industry not liable for churning? Answer the finanancial services industry is being subjected to discrimination on the basis of our choice of occupation. Why do the adviser bodies like FPA etc not lodge a submission to the discrimination commission instead of just feathering their own nest.
What a load of rubbish. The financial services industry is being put through the wringers because the large financial services companies like AMP (and some smaller dodgy ones) thought they had a right to charge people for services they never provided, sell them insurance they knew they could never claim on, move them to their own financial products even though they knew the clients would be worse off, etc, etc.
To compare this to a car salesman who inflates the price of a trade-in just to close the deal is silly.
Then go join that profession. Sounds like you would be well suited.
Labour lawyers continue to prosper pushing these spurious actions.
The gravy train needs to be stopped.
We have to start putting a stop to the ones putting the gravy train in motion to begin with. If they (the Financial Institutions) were to act as specified by the Law, none of these Lawyers would have a leg to stand on.
oh dear…
Good luck trying to prove advisers knew of “equivalent and better insurance with lower premiums”. Go though a couple of claims with those providers and then talk to me about how they are better.
Of course there is also the proposed class action of the advisors against AMP. I should have studied law. What a picnic!
Whilst I am pleased AMP are being sued and I hope they lose I do like that the claim is announced as they are investigating if there is any merit in proceeding with it. In the red corner you have the unethical, incompetent and arrogant AMP management and in the blue corner you have the ambulance chasing scum sucking lawyers. What a wonderful world.
What a joke, it is my understanding that they had/have a broad risk APL and a one-off approval process. I am a non AMP aligned planner and wrote quite a lot of AMP given it was good value for money (approach to upgrades; particularly on FLP, trauma claims guiding statement etc). It is value not price, that matters. This is not the same as Westpac class action – where you could only write Westpac. Any planner that wrote an AMP life policy (whether AMP aligned or not) that was not in the best interests of the client was not doing their job! The AFSL (for lack of supervision and monitoring) and the planner (for a breach of BID) would then be liable.
very well said. Watching lawyers beat their chests and whipping themselves into a feeding frenzy is pathetic.. do they have a code of ethics?
Yes, Lawyers do have a code of ethics. Just ask Nicola Gobbo about it and I’m sure she will happily explain…
We need a Royal Commission into the legal system, claim farming, class actions and the ASIC:law firm:lobby group relationship NOW!
Can we start laughing
Last time I looked every insurer provides commissions to advisers. Perhaps Jan Saddler should start with disclosing Shines commission and their relationship with Woodsford Litigation Funding.
Thank god the class actions are holding AMP to account when the regulators refuse to do so.
As usual good old AMP will fight this to the bitter end and then settle at the last minute, incurring higher costs to the shareholders.
Maybe you should do some actual research rather than relying on media “rubbish”. There’s a thing called Best Interests Duty that holds all advisers accountable, not to mention general ethics! As an AMP aligned adviser, I have never been offered any incentive to write AMP insurance over any other product, nor would I align myself with any product issuer or licensee that did so. Majority of advisers would hold the same values as this.
As an ex BDM for a life office competing against AMP for business from Charter advisers, I can confirm that I had advisers tell me straight to my face that I was losing business due to them being offered incentives and pretty much being instructed by Charter to write with AMP and no one else
As an ex AMPFP adviser I was never offered incentives to recommend AMP insurance ahead of the 6-7 others on their APL. Perhaps what you are referring to stems from the attempted integration of the Charter/Axa/NM acquisition?
As a relatively new practice when I was with Charter (first AXA & then AMP owned) there was never any incentive to write AXA or AMP insurance for my business, possibly you were speaking with older more established businesses who were receiving volume bonuses based on the value of in-force premiums, but then that was common to every dealer group aligned to an insurer. Charter had every insurer on their panel. They only had one platform – North – but you could build a portfolio without including any AXA or AMP product, given the APL had approx 80% non-aligned & only 20% aligned funds on it.
When you compare the insurance offer to many other dealer groups who had only the house brand on the APL or like Count who had only 3 when I was there, the flexibility within Charter has streets ahead.
Maybe you should do some actual research rather than relying on media “rubbish”. There’s a thing called Best Interests Duty that holds all advisers accountable, not to mention general ethics! As an AMP aligned adviser, I have never been offered any incentive to write AMP insurance over any other product, nor would I align myself with any product issuer or licensee that did so. Majority of advisers would hold the same values as this.
Spokeperson from AMP said “we’re gonna delay the heck out of this, see ya’ll in 2035 looool”
take a ticket please… like being at the Deli waiting to get served.
‘Waiting to get served’…..I see what you did there…lol