ASIC announced on Wednesday that it has banned Adam John Bevan – who was an authorised representative of Gold Coast-based financial services licensee Trade Wind Financial Services from July 2017 to May 2020 – from providing financial services, controlling a financial services business, or performing any function in relation to carrying on a financial services business.
The corporate regulator found that Mr Bevan, who was also the sole director of Trade Wind, “failed to act in the best interests of three Trade Wind FS clients when he failed to make reasonable enquiries about their existing superannuation funds and when he did not put in place measures to ensure their funds were transferred in accordance with his advice”.
ASIC has also cancelled the AFS license of Trade Wind “due to a failure by Trade Wind FS to co-operate with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority and pay two AFCA determinations on time”.
The company also did not lodge its 2019 and 2020 audited financial accounts and comply with “several” licence conditions, including failing to notify ASIC of the change in the key person for the AFS licence.
Mr Bevan has applied to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review of ASIC’s decision.
I was under the impression that not lodging audited accounts was a significant breach. Why did ASIC wait 2 years before acting. Surely standard letters of non-compliance would have been issued and followed up to ascertain the reason for this. Once again parties do the right thing and following the guidelines by self-reporting and then being hit by potentially having licences cancelled etc. create a situation where there is almost a reward to do nothing when things go wrong. Like AFCA needs to provide stats how about ASIC doing the same and being judged on their turnaround times.
What’s the run rate on these bans? 2-4 per month?
Three people lodge a complaint, adviser refuses to pay and ASIC goes hard…..whilst over at Aware Super or AMP 30,000 people are significantly disadvantaged, 20,000 Advisers and their clients are forever impacted and ASIC says nothing to see here.
Not to mention the issues with the likes of Westpac, MyBudget, etc – I guess paying large sums of money to keep one’s licence is ASIC’s own version of fee-for-service.
…measures to ensure funds were transferred per advice??
yeah its called doing your job
Never had an admin error in your business, kudos!
But an intrafund adviser can take an instruction from a fund member & do exactly the same. So much for reducing the cost of advice
Such as the Industry Fund who were instructed 4 times by way of documentation and emails to make a PARTIAL rollover of a client’s Super account to their SMSF so as to keep the insurances they currently had as they’d since become uninsurable….and then decided to rollover the entire amount, cancel the insurance and close the account. And still wouldn’t accept responsibility or reinstate for the client. The entire board wouldn’t.
There’s going to be a lot more of these with many self-licensed and boutique licensees either not understanding of their legislative and regulatory obligations (or actively thumbing their noses at them and hoping to fly under the radar) and not adequately capitalised to fund an AFCA determination or court-ordered payout. The question is, how does ASIC adequately monitor and supervise the burgeoning number of self-licensed advisers (who in many instances are fleeing what they see as onerous compliance requirements from institutional licensees)? Is the answer “they don’t”? They will only come in after the damage is done and name and shame via a media release and it’s up to the rest of us to fund ASIC’s action via the ASIC Levy and pick up the tab for the aggrieved clients via the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort? I think ASIC needs to look really hard at who they are willing to issue an AFSL to.
ASIC actually rejects more applications for an AFSL than it hands out and the application process was very extensive. People who become self licensed don’t get an AFSL to “flee onerous compliance requirements” as you claim…they believe in personal accountability and feel advisers should be individually licensed….They’re sick of paying fees for no service from a larger institution. Myself being self licensed now, I receive far significant greater support from a compliance perspective and my compliance is at the highest it’s been as I have a far greater appreciation of what goes wrong. Applying for your own PI cover will teach you that… My head is personally on the stick. Compare this to another adviser where the compliance team never return your calls, is catering to the lowest common denominator, and if you do something wrong you turn up for work next week at the next AFSL.
I’m glad it’s gone well for you and you understand your responsibilities. If you have pride in what you are building and doing all the right things, fantastic. I know of too many advisers however who have gone self-licensing for the reasons I have described and see it as the “easy way out”. Ego and ignorance are a dangerous mix for some people and I’m not kidding when I say the good advisers will pick up the tab.
Sorry, your comment is incorrect re a number of issued AFSLs, and your comment that only now that you are self-license do you do your job correctly shows that you are not a fit and proper person to run an AFSL if you could hold yourself to a higher compliance position when you were in effective control of yourself.
What you’re essentially saying is Financial Planners really can’t be trusted to be like other professions…say your GP, that we need some Drug Company keeping us honest….and who would pay when all these Doctors go rogue….Yes there are lot of parties that have a vested interest in red tape and over bearing compliance regimes.
Good job AFCA and ASIC