Qld adviser banned for three years

ASIC financial advice banning

15 March 2023
| By Laura Dew |
image
image image
expand image

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has banned a Queensland adviser for three years.

Douglas Cecil Allen of Tanawha, Queensland was banned from providing financial services for three years after a sample of his files were found to have a ‘layered advice’ strategy which was inappropriate and not in clients’ best interests. 

He had been working as the sole director and secretary of Global Pacific Solutions Group Pty since 22 January, 2019. He was also responsible manager, operations manager, compliance manger, complaints manager and training officer.

Prior to this, he was a representative of Smart Solutions Group Pty.

ASIC found Allen failed to:

  • Make reasonable enquiries to obtain complete and accurate information when certain aspects of a client’s situation were incomplete or inaccurate;
  • Reasonably consider a client’s insurance options when recommending a client consolidate their superannuation. Mr Allen did not provide a reasonable assessment of the client’s existing insurance, or consider whether there would be insurance consequences for rolling over the client’s superannuation which may have resulted in them being uninsured for a period; and
  • Appropriately scope the superannuation advice to include insurance. Such a limited scope resulted in an insufficient assessment of whether the benefits achieved from rolling over a client’s superannuation would outweigh the disadvantages from the loss of the insurance.

The banning took effect from 15 March, 2022 and was recorded on ASIC’s Financial Advisers Register and the Banned and Disqualied Register. 

He sought a review of ASIC’s decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on 6 April, 2022 but the application was withdrawn on 6 February, 2023.
 

Read more about:

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest news and developments in wealth management industry

MARKET INSIGHTS

Completely agree Peter. The definition of 'significant change is circumstances relevant to the scope of the advice' is s...

3 weeks 6 days ago

This verdict highlights something deeply wrong and rotten at the heart of the FSCP. We are witnessing a heavy-handed, op...

1 month ago

Interesting. Would be good to know the details of the StrategyOne deal....

1 month ago

Insignia Financial has confirmed it is considering a preliminary non-binding proposal received from a US private equity giant to acquire the firm. ...

1 week 4 days ago

Six of the seven listed financial advice licensees have reported positive share price growth in 2024, with AMP and Insignia successfully reversing earlier losses. ...

1 week ago

Specialist wealth platform provider Mason Stevens has become the latest target of an acquisition as it enters a binding agreement with a leading Sydney-based private equi...

6 days 15 hours ago