Qld adviser banned for three years

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.

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He sought a review of ASIC’s decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on 6 April, 2022 but the application was withdrawn on 6 February, 2023.