ASIC imposes 7-year ban on former UGC Head of Advice
The former head of advice at Melbourne-based UGC, Louis Van Coppenhagen has been banned from providing financial services for seven years.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced it had banned Van Coppenhagen from providing financial services, controlling an entity that carries on a financial services business or performing any function involved in carrying on a financial services business.
It said it had found that Van Coppenhagen, while authorised by MWL Financial Services Pty Ltd (MWL), gave inappropriate advice to certain clients which was not in their best interests.
The regulator said Van Coppenhagen recommended certain MWL clients invest most of their superannuation into the ‘High Growth’ or ‘Growth’ class of the Shield Master Fund (Shield) which were high risk investments.
ASIC also found that Van Coppenhagen, while authorised by United Global Capital Pty Ltd (UGC), was instrumental to the implementation of UGC’s advice model including preparing a template Advice Proposal Document. ASIC cancelled UGC’s licence for providing conflicted personal advice concerning highly speculative investments.
ASIC has reason to believe that Mr Van Coppenhagen is not a fit and proper person, is not competent and is likely to contravene a financial services law.
The banning order took effect from 16 December 2025.
Scrap it
If this does happen it will represent the biggest case of intergenerational theft ever. Older/pension members getting their balances artificially…
Didn't AusSuper lose over a Billion dollars in a failed investment in Plurasight?
There would be NO advice "vacuum" if the insane levels of red tape were removed. This conversation is utter nonsense.…
It is absolute rubbish to link industry fund conflicted advice with the prevention of fraud like Shield.