A client of a Securitor financial planner has used a submission to a parliamentary inquiry to allege Colonial Geared Investments (CGI) has admitted information it provided regarding its clients’ margin loan was “inaccurate” for a period of weeks during the share market meltdown last year.
Securitor client Stephen Wilson has written a detailed report of his planner’s struggle with CGI over the management of his margin loan portfolio in the final quarter of last year. In his submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the financial services industry, Wilson said his planner had had “concerns and difficulties” with the accuracy of investment figures provided by CGI, and had “raised the issue with CGI as far back as June 2008”. Wilson said his planner, who he did not name, had continued to raise these concerns with CGI on at least four occasions between late September and early November 2008.
In his submission Wilson said CGI has now “admitted in an email to my adviser that their figures and website were inaccurate from the 25th September, 2008, until the 20th October, 2008”.
Concerns regarding the ability of CGI’s systems and processes to handle the significant share market volatility at the end of last year was also raised by a former executive of Storm Financial. Wilson said while he “was not caught up in the Storm Financial disaster”, he believes many of the issues encountered by him and his adviser were similar to those of Storm clients.
He too believes CGI was “unable to respond to the rapid fall” in the share market and, as a result, failed in its “duty of care” to clients. Wilson believes CGI “could not and did not react in a timely manner to the rapid decline in the markets”.
