{"id":34339,"date":"2016-08-26T10:48:29","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T00:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=34339"},"modified":"2016-08-26T16:35:22","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T06:35:22","slug":"afa-egm-corps-act-requires-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2016\/08\/26\/afa-egm-corps-act-requires-5\/","title":{"rendered":"AFA EGM – Corps Act Requires 5%"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Association of Financial Advisers has denied allegations it is ignorant of its own by-laws regarding a call for an Extraordinary General Meeting, stating the only legal measure in use was the requirement for 5% or more of members to request the meeting.<\/p>\n

\"AFA<\/a>
AFA CEO, Brad Fox<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the AFA by-laws state a meeting must be called if requested by either 100 members or 5% of the membership they also state the by-laws operate \u201cin accordance with the Corporations Act<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

While the by-laws, which were last updated in December 2014, were previously consistent with the Corporations Act, the latter changed on 19 March 2015 and removed the 100 member criteria for calling a meeting.<\/p>\n

As a result of this change, a request for an EGM of the AFA would need to come from 5% of its membership, or 148 members at the time the meeting was requested on 18 August.<\/p>\n

AFA Chief Executive, Brad Fox<\/strong> said the Association has sought legal advice on this issue on 9 August and was told the 5% criteria is the only one in use under law.<\/p>\n

…the 5% criteria is the only one in use under law.<\/h6>\n

He also stated the Association had applied that measure in assessing the request for an EGM from a number of members led by Now Financial Group Director and Fellow of the AFA, Mark Dunsford<\/strong>. (See:\u00a0Formal Request For EGM Lodged With AFA<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Earlier this week the AFA confirmed that 230 members had submitted forms requesting an EGM but 103 of those forms were invalid (including 50 which were duplicates), reducing the number of valid forms to 127, which was under the required threshold of members required to call a meeting under the Corporations Act (see:\u00a0AFA EGM Request Falls Short Due to Invalid Forms<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In a statement released to media after the announcement by the AFA regarding the invalid forms, Dunsford said Fox did not understand the Association\u2019s by-laws pointing to section 43 which stated the threshold for a meeting was 100 members or 5% of the membership.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrad it is clear to us now, that you not only fail to understand carve outs, and the full impact of LIF legislation, but you also fail to understand our by-laws,\u201d Dunsford said.<\/p>\n

He also stated the request for an EGM had 127 valid requests (out of 230 submitted) and the AFA\u2019s refusal to call a meeting came \u201c…after all the AFA shenanigans of altering member\u2019s numbers without telling advisers and accepting their money\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fox said some of the forms had older member numbers which had changed after the AFA introduced a new member database system in late 2015 and at that time it had issued members with new numbers.<\/p>\n

…the AFA contacted 25 members who had used incorrect or old numbers … and had accepted their request forms<\/h6>\n

In correspondence sent to Dunsford, which Dunsford in turn released to the media, the AFA stated it had contacted 25 members who had used incorrect or old numbers and verified they were members and had accepted their request forms, which contributed to the 127 valid forms.<\/p>\n

In announcing the number of valid forms earlier this week the AFA stated it was also contacting 24 members where forms had been received in their name but the details provided were insufficient to identify whether the member completed the form.<\/p>\n

The AFA said it would help those members complete the form if that was their intention.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note to Advisers:<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

We welcome your comments and in the interest of fairness, request that you properly identify yourself either in your post ID or at the end of each comment<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Association of Financial Advisers has denied allegations it is ignorant of its own by-laws regarding a call for an Extraordinary General Meeting, stating the only legal measure in use was the requirement for 5% or more of members to request the meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-associations","category-compliance-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}