On Wednesday, the corporate regulator confirmed the ban for Ashok Sherwal, saying he “advised clients in need of cash to replace their existing insurance and superannuation products, as well as to take out new insurance products, so that he could generate advice fees and insurance commissions”.
ASIC claims that Mr Sherwal used some fees and commissions received to make cash payments to these clients.
He was found to have failed to identify the scope of advice being sought by his clients and didn’t obtain complete and accurate client details, which led to clients receiving inappropriate advice and their superannuation balances being “significantly eroded”.
In its decision, ASIC found that Mr Sherwal misunderstood the best-interest duties required of him and demonstrated an inability to follow proper financial advice processes.
Mr Sherwal has appealed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review of ASIC’s decision.
“advised clients in need of cash to replace their existing insurance and superannuation products, as well as to take out new insurance products, so that he could generate advice fees and insurance commissions”
I guess if it the clients were given Qantas frequent Flyer points all would have been OK?
How do ASIC explain this, when NONE of the realestate agents/mortgage brokers/accountants who recently recommended that their clients withdraw $20k super to get a bigger loan were even investigated by ASIC.
I suppose i can refer back to one rule that we can rely on in this industry. Everyone and anyone can give as much financial advice on whatever they want without any fear of repercussions from ASIC, other than qualified Financial Advisers.
Look him up on the ASIC register and everything makes sense in seconds – given his track record of changing AFSLs and how long he lasted with each one, it is amazing he found one who took him on being the last one on the record.
So what happened to the due diligence completed when on-boarding him ??
if you read comments on these forums – it is easy to explain. he is a good guy who has been chased out of the industry by asic and the banks..
Advice why bother
Putting aside the con job for a moment, were the clients better off in terms of saving premiums v benefits, super fees v performance
Think you missed the point.
He’s clearly deficient in several areas…though perhaps ASIC should also be having a stronger focus on the betterment vs detriment of clients. Some may have had a greater need for cash now than in 20-30 years at retirement. Some may have benefited from different insurances. Sadly I know of a few advisers in the last few years alone who have been banned when there were no complaints, plenty of praise from their clients and all were better off as a result of the advice they’d been given. It didn’t stop ASIC though as is well known – public servants being able to tick boxes on their procedural lists for documents being sent on time (regardless of whether clients want or benefit from them or not) and crossing Ts and dotting Is is more important than helping people.
ASIC is not interested in the client – silly.