Two financial advisers have received bans for misleading and deceptive conduct while another has received an overturning of a recent ban in a series of ASIC related actions.
ASIC has permanently banned a former Professional Investment Services (PIS) adviser from providing financial services and engaging in credit activity after it found he acted dishonestly and had deceived his licensee and a superannuation fund.
The regulator banned Stewart James Banks, from the Gold Coast, Queensland after it found that during the period between September 2012 and April 2015 he had created a range of false documents to claim fees he was not entitled to, and told clients he was paid by n insurance product provider when he drew fees directly from a clients’ superannuation.
Banks also provided false declarations to the trustee of a superannuation fund to access fees from the superannuation accounts of clients and provided those funds to clients while keeping a portion of the funds for himself.
ASIC found Banks, who was employed as an authorised representative of PIS from 18 April 2007 until 20 May 2015, was not of good fame and character due to his dishonest conduct, betrayal of client trust, and deception of PIS and the trustee of the superannuation fund.
ASIC has also banned Keira Jane Keegan, a Sydney based financial adviser and former representative of Protect Ensure Pty Ltd, from providing financial services for a period of three years, due to misleading and deceptive conduct.
Keegan, who was a representative of Protect Ensure from 12 November 2013 and 15 December 2014, was banned for misrepresenting the nature of Protect Insure issued investments within self-managed superannuation.
Keegan described the funds as conservative and low risk and recommended client funds be pooled to gain a higher return, when the investments were actually unsecured and represented a high-risk investment and were ultimately used to pay Protect Ensure’s business related expenses, resulting in the loss of client funds.
The AFS licence of Protect Ensure was cancelled on 15 December 2014 as a result of it not having adequate financial resources to provide the services covered by the Licence and to carry out the supervisory arrangements required under the Corporations Act.
In related news, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has overturned a previous ASIC banning handed down in late February 2016 in relation to former NAB adviser Gerard McCormack, who had been banned for five years.
Previously, ASIC had banned McCormack, of South Melbourne, Victoria, for what it considered misleading and deceptive conduct in relation to a superannuation transfer.
In delivering its decision on 14 December the AAT, following an application for review by McCormack, found that while he had breached the Corporations Act the circumstances of the case were rare and a banning order would not serve to protect the public nor prevent similar behaviour in the future, nor maintain investor and consumer confidence in financial markets.
