ASIC’s Kirkland urges advisers to hold peers to account
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is urging financial advisers to dob-in their peers if they believe they are doing the wrong thing.
ASIC Commissioner, Alan Kirkland said advisers are in a unique position to recognise when someone had been the victim of poor advice.
Addressing an Institute of Managed Accounts Professionals (IMAP) event in Sydney, Kirkland said that individually, and with their peers, advisers had to uphold the ethical standards of the profession and hold each other accountable in the public interest.
“Where you detect concerning conduct, we encourage you to report it to ASIC,” he said.
Kirkland then referenced the fall-out from the Shield and First Guardian failures “where best interests duties and conflict of interest obligations appeared to have been blatantly disregarded”.
He said that while Shield and First Guardian were dominating the headlines, they were not the only instances “where industry professionals appear to be playing fast and loose with people’s life savings”.
“We’ve currently got active multiple investigations into high risk super switching schemes each involving multiple third parties and associates,” Kirkland said.
Like other senior ASIC officials he said that the regulator was scrutinising every part of the value chain.
Dealing with ASIC’s upcoming review of the managed accounts environment, Kirkland the same rules around providing services efficiently, honestly and fairly still applied but urged against a cookie cutter approach.
Questioned by IMAP chair, Toby Potter, Kirkland said ASIC was going into the exercise with an open mind in circumstances where the regulator had not looked specifically at managed accounts for some time.
“We’ll be looking at what is the state of play, what are some of the different propositions in the market and how they differ,” he said.
Kirkland said ASIC wanted to understand the efficiencies of managed accounts as opposed to advising on individual managed portfolios, how the efficiencies are being realised and who is capturing the value from the efficiencies.
Asic needs to be transparent and disclose how many reports were made against failed firms such as shield, first guardian, lion.
Reported multiple times in 2021 against one of these firms. Nothing.
ASIC talking a good cop regulator role and relationship with Advisers but in reality do NOTHING.
Dodgy Dixon’s with a decade of time of 60 Adviser complaints = ASIC DO NOTHING until the death.
Then ASIC advertise for years for AFCA complaints and know it to be funded via Advisers from CSLR Levies.
ASIC allow Dixon’s with E&P to illegally Phoenix $16mill loan asset, 3,000 clients & 40 Advisers for zero $$ and ASIC DO NOTHING.
It seems there were several years of Adviser warnings to ASIC about Shield & First Guardian, yet again ASIC turn up years too late.
ASIC & Canberra need to ask why they are so bloody useless with the Adviser dob-ins they get ???????
I totally agree on the obligation to report misconduct by others, however rather than having protections akin to whistleblowers, any financial adviser (or their licensee) who reports another adviser has an obligation under the dob-in regime (Section 912DAB of the Corporations Act) to out themselves with the licensee that they dobbed-in. It is a breach of the law not to tell the other licensee that you have dobbed them in. Well done Ken Hayne for providing this totally screwed up and unbalanced set of obligations. Remove the self reporting dob-in obligation, provide some protections and I am sure many more advisers would be much more likely to dob-in another adviser. A simple change, but will it ever happen?
Loads of Adviser complaints to ASIC.
ASIC DO NOTHING.
Good legal point you raise, confirms yet again how badly Canberra do their jobs.
Who is ever held to account in Canberra for all the failures ???
What is the point? If ASIC was so concerned about the concept of fee for no service maybe they should hold themselves to the same standard. They have received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and have failed to do their most important role, protect consumers from financial fraud. What makes it worse is criminal fraud has been reported to them many times over many years and they did nothing. Now the same advisers who report the crimes have to pay for their failures via the CSLR. If ASIC is truly scrutinising the whole value chain maybe they should consider what they have done so wrong for such significant consumer harm to occur.
This is the same Alan Kirkland who was the former CEO of CHOICE before becoming an ASIC Commissioner?
Remind me again the content of the submissions that CHOICE made to Treasury, Royal Commission etc. regarding advisers whilst Kirkland was CEO. Notably with regard to fees being paid from super for financial advice.
Kirkland aside, ASIC need to get their own house in order.
This is a joke right? Yes my experience is ASIC do nothing and this was before CSLR. Now, they have made it so if I do go to the trouble of dobbing in someone – they may still not do anything but if they do my CSLR fee goes up. So, this article is a joke yes?!
It’s hard to hold the adviser to account when licensees employ these advisers again
Up to 10 venture egg advisers are now employed in other businesses
These advisers need to be removed from the industry
At the end of the day First Guardian failed and investors lost money because of ASIC.
I contacted ASIC about a scam and the staff member laughed at me down the phone.
Actully tried to make a report about Venture Egg but after an hour of completing their online form that was hard as hell to find, I felt like I was the criminal. All my dealings with ASIC it’s like I’m the person they’re trying to crush. Advisers are like cockroaches that scuttle about in the Kitchen late at night. ASIC turns the light on and we run fearing we’re going to be squished.
Many times have reached out to ASIC and it goes nowhere. Once I was even investigated… Yikes.
Sadly I would not encourage Advisers to reach out to ASIC. They’re a waste of space. Let’s remember there are more investigators in the advice section then overseeing super funds. We need a Royal Commission into them.
A royal commission into ASIC along with a royal commission into the links between legislators, unions and super trustees is long overdue.
No point, the complaints are simply ignored by ASIC. I’m spending my time training for my next occupation.