The royal commission had heard that Andrew Smith resigned from Westpac, prior to joining Dover, after he was found to be churning clients through fixed income products and asking his clients to sign blank documents.
Since joining Dover, Mr McMaster said ASIC was happy with Mr Smith’s conduct.
In an ASIC document seen by ifa, dated 20 November 2017, it shows Mr Smith gave, in Mr McMaster’s terms, “excellent advice at Dover”.
“Since joining Dover in April 2015, Mr Smith has not received any client complaints, and Dover has not identified or reported any adverse matters,” the document said.
The three ASIC executives, lawyers Christopher Newby and Lisa Saunders, and analyst Denise Dawson, had reviewed 15 of Mr Smith’s client files after he left Westpac.
Mr McMaster told ifa that their task at hand was the “imminent banning of Andrew Smith”, and that they would do it if they could.
“Sadly for ASIC, the facts were opposite – Andrew Smith’s work at Dover was excellent. Fifteen out of 15 statements of advice ticked nearly every ASIC box,” he said.
“Each was in the client’s best interests and appropriate to the client’s circumstances. There were a few minor glitches, a few unticked ASIC boxes, but nothing significant.
“The three ASIC executives concluded Andrew Smith’s work during his two-and-a-half years at Dover was excellent. This is not surprising because Andrew Smith is an excellent financial planner.
“The three ASIC executives recommended Andrew Smith and Dover be advised of this, and that no further action would be taken. The file would be closed.”
Mr McMaster then said to recall various reports from ASIC saying that 80 per cent of bank statements of advice are not in the client’s best interests, and that 10 per cent actually damage the client’s interests.
“Westpac’s Michael Wright says he tolerates a 25 per cent advice failure rate in his sales team. ASIC found Andrew Smith’s work at Dover was about five times as good as the average bank adviser,” he said.
“Fifteen out of 15; 100 per cent. You can’t get better than that. It was heaps better than Westpac’s average.”
More to come.
Clarification: BT has responded to Mr McMaster’s claim that Michael Wright tolerates a 25 per cent advice failure rate in his sales team, calling them inaccurate and untrue. It referred to comments from Mr Wright at the royal commission hearings, “I won’t rest until that number is a zero. There has been a significant amount of work done to drive that towards zero.”
When the other court cases start to come to light that McMaster is involved in, people will run a mile from this person
If a person holds up a bank and takes $10 as another who holds up a bank and takes $100,000. They are both Bank robbers. Big or small makes no difference. The law is broken. Dover should understand this.
“punishment fit the crime” courtesy The Mikado. ASIC needs to understand that too.
That is rather the point: Dover did not even take $10. No client lost any money at all.
Terry fainted and lost his business. Anthony “Jack Regan” went on stress leave and is on a package of $3m per year. AMP Facing criminal charges, Dover facing civil charges. Dover being pursued for a client protection policy. AMP being pursued (ever so slowly) for what looks like broad scale fraud.
If Dover had done anything worse than a poorly written client protection policy then ASIC aren’t telling us about it. Meanwhile it seems like ASIC are doing everything they can to avoid chasing the big end of town. This stinks to high heaven.
terry you gotta fight this mate
I am sure ASIC will round up all the crooks in the industry. Big and small.
[quote=Anonymous]MLA solicitors, come make an appointment and we can get the ball rolling[/quote]
Who would make any appointment with MLA. Terry will keep trying to take everyone’s money.
I see MLA solicitors are no more. Representing one bad apple and yourself didn’t work
MINA was da bomb.
At last the truth is starting to emerge about who the good and bad guys really are. Terry McMaster collapsed due to the undeserved and unexpected shame that was heaped upon him at the commission.
It is the dishonest guys that are used to criticism and carry on without missing a beat.
But is McMaster was truthful and honest why would he be experiencing any form of shame? If he did faint due to shame well… its hardly undeserved or unexpected then.
McMaster is not PR trained like the others were – he’s a one man army
mcmaster trains for triathlons. he’s coming back, he’s still doing Friday reflections. check out his website
so funny this guy, total nutter, keeps mentioning he lives by the beach in a middle ring Melbourne suburb and owns an industrial property where dover (or mcmasters) is housed and doesn’t pay rent and how dover has a tangible balance sheet of $6.5m
terry please shush ASIC are going to take it all away from you because you cannot shut up
terry, please black rock ain’t Toorak black rock is close to blacktown in sydney instead
Not sure about McMaster but you obviously know nothing about Melbourne suburbs!
There has been comments here about the role the FPA. I would encourage all Advisers and FPA members to be write to the Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB) at Email: info@fpsb.org and ask them to strip the FPA of it’s CFP distribution rights here in Australia. We need an enquiry into 1) their behavior and the relationship with the businesses named in the Royal Commission. 2) the Sam H and Dante relationship 3) Haynes recommendation that professional bodies cannot be trusted to be a code monitoring body.
They have brought the industry into shame, caused FASEA by siding with the banks and tarnished the CFP brand. All planners who care about clients whether FPA members or not and are sick over regulation and continued Government Intervention MUST write. All Non members should be writing saying you cannot join the FPA due to their relationship with product providers and being a member would be complicit in the behaviour of FPA professional partners that appeared at the Royal Commission.
There is an election around the corner with a new Government likely. We need professional associations to end their relationship with product manufacturers pronto before round 4 of Government intervention occurs again.
Did the royal commission have that document? Absolutely disgraceful that they let a mans reputation be smashed like that if they knew he did better at Dover.
The Royal Commission definitely had the document: this is explained in detail here: https://www.dover.com.au/friday-reflections/andrew-smith-a-royal-commission-omission/
Terry you need to push this hard mate keep going this is totally unfair. we don’t want asic anyone can be ruined anytime at their whim
Gee if only he didn’t collapse in the witness stand, I’m sure he could have cleared up the inconsistencies there and then. 🙄
Perfect.
[quote=Anonymous]Seriously? I would have thought it’s very significant. They are yet to find a client of Dover who has lost money, yet Dover gets shut down on the basis of misleading information in their CPP? The same CPP ASIC had in their possession for two years? Lets all overlook the fact that customers of the bank have lost 100s of millions due to bad advice.
I think Terry McMaster has suffered the ultimate reprimand, ASIC destroyed his business. Don’t forget the 400 advisers who were collateral damage in ASICs display of muscle flexing.
Keep on living in the dream world…..[/quote] It’s almost like ASIC don’t want to attack the big banks and AMP. I wonder why?
Dover didn’t get shut down – they voluntarily closed. Amazing how facts can change a story isn’t it?
BS they were shut down by ASIC https://asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/find-a-media-release/2018-releases/18-195mr-dover-financial-advisers-financial-services-licence-to-be-cancelled/
With ASICs foot well & truly on their throat as they closed “voluntarily”…..
Smell a bit fishy to me too. ASIC go all out to wind up Dover (with $4b FUM) and then pursue them over a client protection policy. Meanwhile banks have TRILLIONS in FUM and have committed BROAD SCALE BREACHES and ASIC havent done anything!
I am no fan of Dover but this stinks to high heaven.
A quick straw pole…. How many ex-Dover advisers would consider joining a class action against ASIC? ASIC forced Dover to shut down their AFSL at short-notice on the basis of ‘misleading information in their client protection policy’. It’s inconvenient that they haven’t been able to identify a single client who has lost money…. The shutdown put clients at risk and caused advisers (us) immeasurable hardship. Some have been able to recover, others have not. ASIC had a vendetta against Terry McMaster and Dover and advisers and their businesses were collateral damage.
A few facts….
Dover co operated fully with a voluntary ASIC audit back in May 2016. In the months which followed, Dover begged for an interim report with an ‘undertaking to act on all findings’. These requests were repeated ignored by ASIC.
At the same time, ASIC took possession of Dover’s client protection policy. ASIC held on to this for the best part of two years, yet raised no concerns with Dover. They waited for the start of the Royal Commission before pulling the trigger. What a setup! When ASIC alerted Dover to problems with the CPP, Dover remediated the situation immediately. This included writing to every single client affected by the CPP. I believe the are yet to receive a complaint.
I’m sorry but this stinks to high-heaven! Who agrees? Over the last 18 months of its operation, Dover recruited 130 advisers from the banks. Guess who is losing money here?
Terry, it could be time to start rallying the troops. Who’s in?
Where would you like us to faint oh leader?
There is more to come to light re McMaster. The commission only scratch the surface of this smelly mess
what is to come and how would you know?
McMaster is not telling all at this stage
I know what is coming over the hill. Terry is running for his life lol
he has an escape route planned. he is going to be an obnoxious Aussie tourist in Vietnam
he’ll blend in quite nicely with his uncouth compatriots
Terry pulled the fainting trick. Next he will be claiming mental illness.
Apart from Terry, how much have we as advisers suffered in terms of potential income lost due to the banks tarnishing the reputation of the financial planning community? Class action?
not just monetarily, what about mentally, the stress and torture we have been under and our families.
this industry is a disaster, and this country has become a basket case. thank god, i am leaving both
I think Terry is going to flee
yes, we need to do a class action, but how about we name the banking ceo’s as well in the lawsuit. thousands of advisers will come forward with mental health issues which cannot be denied.
we have suffered long now it is time to act.
Shine Lawyers? Maurice Blackburn? Where are you?
MLA solicitors, come make an appointment and we can get the ball rolling
Yes, class action, I can see it now, Slater and Gordon and all the base level smelly legal firms are ringing financial planners right now saying, ”Many of your colleagues have not complied with the legislation, many taking fees for no advice, many breaking a range of laws and regulations on so many occasions they can’t count that high, that aside, let’s start a class action, you in? Just deposit $20k in this account and off we go! What’s that you say, ”no win, no fee”, not in this case sunny-jim (or sunny-jane) , we know we have no chance of winning.”
I can’t believe how much enjoyment and funnies you all keep posting to us all.
dear friend and colleague, we have little left than our sense of humor. please let these posters keep posting. for god sake, that’s all i have
career : gonski
business: gonski
retirement : gonski
business value: plummeting and gonski
for god sake let me laugh and enjoy my sake
Greed is what the banking royal commission is about and McMaster is up to his neck with greed.
bill please tell. mcmaster may be greedy but the FPA is greedy and incompetent and yet advisers still keep paying membership to the FPA. Fools
Dante, disband the FPA now and resign.
criminal charges against Dante and his 4P’s and 4Fs
Add to that the AFA – crooks!
Here we go again Bill. Instead of continually throwing around wild accusations, why don’t you tell us what you apparently know. It is clear that you don’t like Terry, but baseless claims like this add zero to the discussion.
Bill, it would be great if you could stick to the facts and not use this discussion forum to voice your personal opinions about Terry McMaster. I don’t know the guy but I think it’s fairly obvious he was the victim of a set-up at the Royal Commission.
Bill, if it was all about greed, Dover could easily have been charging advisers a lot more in adviser fees. Also, they could have made money by accepting kick-backs from product providers etc. This didn’t happen because they wanted their dealer group to be conflict free. If only the banks adopted these principals, financial planning would not have been included at the RC…..
Stick to the facts please Bill…..
Terry something very SUSS has happened with the closure. Keep pushing, keep exposing. Get your ARs together and do a group class action against ASIC… I heard some gossip down the grapevine that someone who recently left ASIC wasn’t very fond of Dover and Terry (and that is being kind). There is a BIG story here…
go on tell us. what’s the goss ?
vry SUSS indeed when youre trying vry hard not sound like Mr Mc..
then comment on ur own comment 2 hrs ltr..
hopelessly waiting 4 someone to throw u a nugget of info..
I want to know the goss as well!!
terry you need to blow this up. it needs to blow up, this asic mob are out of control.
power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Dover corrupts and absolute Dover corrupts absolutely
ASIC wants to clean up the financial planning industry. Who will clean up ASIC?
You Terry, grab a mop & broom & enjoy your new career
Technically he would still be working in the financial industry so not even that would be allowed
So Terry you are now the guardian of industry advice, surely shut up, and accept your wrong doings is best now.
i don’t particularly like the guy. but in this instance, he is doing the right thing and i support him.
keep up the good work Terry. might as well go down fighting
we are with you.
does anybody think or would want to set up a fighting fund for Terry and donate ?
Is McMaster asking for money already? The legal costs haven’t even begun. Gee Wizz that guy is about to be in big trouble..
Yes, Terry wants to set up a fighting fund for Terry. But we all saw him at the RC, not much fight when the difficult questions came when surrounded by timber benches and much more intelligent folk. I won’t be donating.
It’s so easy for the RC to ignore facts to, [i]uhmm[/i], “get their job done”. Ruining a person’s life is just collateral damage. Do we still want to be in this industry? Hell, do we still want to live in this country?
answer to both your questions. no i don’t. if anyone thinks this cannot happen to them, they are living in fairyland.
They can keep McMaster company in fairyland
Let me get this straight… ASIC executives reviewed 15 of Andrew Smith SOAs whilst he was at Dover and didn’t find any problems? Yet somehow Dover was made to look like the bad guys?
This just gets worse and worse for ASIC…. They owe everyone an explanation. Especially Smith and Dover. I’m still shaking my head in disbelief……
But what did ASIC / Westpac find about Andrew Smith at Westpac? ”Dover, the fish that John West financial planning reject”.
How is one ‘good adviser’ meant to reflect the entirety of the Dover business and its underlying issues? I think there were much bigger issues at play there despite one good adviser! I know a few personally who I wouldn’t take free advice from who went to Dover after no-one else would employ them!
Stick to the facts. No one is saying he reflects the entirety of Dover except ASIC. He was used as an example of why Dover advisers were bad. Now its been shown his advice was deemed compliant by ASIC.
So, Peter Kell and Tim Mullaly say watching Winston Smith get destroyed in the media storm, and did not bother to speak up and tell the truth that they had found Winston Smith’s work at Dover to be excellent?
How do these two sleep at night?
Can Winston do anything now to make ASIC tell the truth? Finally?
What does this mean for everyone else
all of us are at risk as they just make stuff up as they go along with no regard for the facts, truth etc.
Let me get this straight… ASIC executives reviewed 15 of Adam Palmers SOAs whilst he was at Dover and didn’t find any problems? Yet somehow Dover was made to look like the bad guys?
This just gets worse and worse for ASIC…. They owe everyone an explanation. Especially Palmer and Dover. I’m still shaking my head in disbelief……
Yes, that is correct. What is worse, the big offenders are walking away scott free
Great to see, assume Terry figures he will probably be utterly destroyed anyway if the ASIC action continues its relentless pursuit of him and has not much else left to lose. He may as well go as public as possible on as many smelly fish that ASIC or the RC would rather be left buried.
Keep up the factual release of information as hard and fast as you can Terry, would be great to see what else they are hiding and have their processes and internal communications come to light of day under FOI act!
An apology from the RC will never be forthcoming.
They sit in judgment and an admittance of error is not in the rule book.
It’s like the ABC…independent and unbiased……yeah right.
A taxpayer funded organisation that isn’t allowed to be questioned by the taxpayer.
It’s like their reporter Andrew Probyn…if anyone has watched him closely over the last 12 months, it is blatantly obvious as to his agenda.
And then there was News Breakfast host Madeline Morris who on the morning of 12th Sept, gave incorrect and negligent general financial advice on air when she very clearly stated that there was no point in having any more than one Life Insurance policy in place because only one policy will ever pay out and having other policies was a waste of money.
Her co-host, Michael Rowland was visibly uncomfortable with her statement and attempted to deflect, but Madeline persisted and stated that ” as you only die once “, having more than one Life Insurance policy was not warranted.!!
Suffice it to say there was no apology for blatantly incorrect information and she was not on air for the next few days.
Madeline Morris also confirmed she had at least 4 super funds in place, most likely all with Life Insurance and really didn’t understand much about it all. (completely obvious Madeline).
Justine Milne, you still doing the government’s work? 🙄
Michael Wright tolerates a 25% advice failure in his SALES TEAM. Such interesting language from the banks.
Terry McMaster, the financial services embarrassing sideshow that just keeps on giving and giving!
Love your work Terry, keep it up.
Grow up, he has a right to a voice and the above indicates that in this situation his voice is right. Good on him for sticking up for someone else’s reputation despite his own problems.
I’ve never met the man and know nothing further than this and prior articles, but have extensive industry experience at FP and AFSL roles, and it is actually refreshing to have someone game enough to speak up especially if the RC or ASIC get it wrong or disclose purposely misleading half truths.
From your tone you’re clearly a small time operator who believes he’s a paragon of virtue and professionalism. Be interesting to see if you would get 15 / 15 in an ASIC review. Seriously doubt it, given your mouth.
This was so funny. But unfortunately with much reasoning.
“From your tone, you’re clearly a small time operator…” Never been a financial planner, never will, who’d be silly enough to potentially risk their personal assets / reputation for such a little financial gain. Apologies, let’s face it, the financial planning industry as it was is no longer, the changes the industry will be going through to potentially be a profession should have happened in the late 1990’s, but the sore festered too long, way too long, and here we are now.
Yes. I’ve worked around financial services off and on for a while, could see Dover in the headlights years ago, picking up a lot of other group ”rejects”, usually pushed out to Dover for compliance breaches or potential criminal activity. Terry didn’t care, take the $20k a year and we’ll deal with that later. A time bomb waiting to explode. It did!
I predicted old ”BenDover” were stuffed when they were called to the RC, a few posters here were in denial, but look now. He bailed for a reason.
Unlike you, I’ve met Terry a few times, not recently, and admittedly I was dubious about the bloke, admittedly not overly impressed by him on each interaction, worse though, I’m not surprised he pulled the fake illness to get out of the RC hearing, not surprised he bailed on Dover, not really surprised he’s now throwing stones, pulling the rest of the industry down. That’s Terry. It’s all about Terry.
But when/if he goes to court, which I doubt he’ll do, he is ”too Terry” to do that, it won’t be the outcome that many of you want.
Apologies for taking the hope away from your rose-tinted Terry glasses. He should never be seen as an industry messiah. Follow/support him at the industries likely doom.
I don’t need an ASIC review. I’m not a financial planner. Who’d be silly enough to want to ”join the profession” or stay in the ”profession”.
I’m surprised any ”big time” operator has the time to post here. Most that do post here don’t come across as just hanging in there.
There is very smelly mess surrounding ASICs treatment of DOVER !
so does that mean bank planners are not as bad as everyone thinks?
People will do what they’re told to keep food on their table and roof over their heads and this is the problem with the system.
the big elephant in the room is the current AFSL structure. it doesn’t work. that needs to change before any of this mess does
Keep digging, Terry.
I don’t think he cares nor it’s of any significance at this stage. His advice business is gone and now he can speak outwardly about inconsistencies and falsehoods without fear of ultimate reprimand.
Seriously? I would have thought it’s very significant. They are yet to find a client of Dover who has lost money, yet Dover gets shut down on the basis of misleading information in their CPP? The same CPP ASIC had in their possession for two years? Lets all overlook the fact that customers of the bank have lost 100s of millions due to bad advice.
I think Terry McMaster has suffered the ultimate reprimand, ASIC destroyed his business. Don’t forget the 400 advisers who were collateral damage in ASICs display of muscle flexing.
Keep on living in the dream world…..