- Adviser Banned For Lack of Documentation
- Estate Planning Process to Take One Hour
Adviser Banned For Lack of Documentation
The Australians Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has banned former ANZ Banking Group employee Wayne Meadth from providing financial services for one year after it found he was not adequately trained or competent to provide financial services.
ASIC banned Meadth, who was employed by ANZ as a financial adviser from 2004 to March 2014, after ANZ lodged a breach report with ASIC regarding Meadth.
In its subsequent investigation, ASIC found that during 2012 and 2013 Meadth had failed to provide 11 clients with written documentation of his recommendations about their investment portfolio despite the clients paying for an advice package which included an annual review.
Under this review Meadth was required to review the client’s objectives and strategy and provide written documentation of his recommendations.
The banning was part of ASIC’s ongoing Wealth Management Project which focuses on the conduct of the largest financial advice firms, and Meadth has the right to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review of ASIC’s decision.
Estate Planning Process to Take One Hour
Client engagement platform AstuteWheel has expanded its offering into estate planning with a stand-alone online tool that reduces an advisers time in the process down to a single hour.
AstuteWheel, Managing Director, Hans Egger said while financial advisers are not legally permitted to provide estate planning advice, they can facilitate the process and the new tool – Astute Estate Planner – will allow them to guide clients through decisions around appointing an executor, guardians or beneficiaries before meeting with their estate planning professionals.
Eggers said the online tool requires around an hour for clients to input their own data which is the sent to their financial adviser for review and discussion with the client, which also takes around an hour. This is turn leads to the creation of a briefing document that can be used with lawyers and estate planning specialists to draft wills and other documents.
Egger said the tools maximizes the time advisers spend with clients on estate planning using auto-generated visuals like electronic family trees and entity diagrams and recording the client’s wishes with regards to Wills, beneficiaries, powers of attorney and guardianship, and how they’d like their estate to be distributed and protected.
“Astute Estate Planner translates to considerable savings in both time and money for the client and better, more efficient meetings not only for financial advisers but also for other professionals engaged in the process such as lawyers and accountants.”
