One former financial adviser has been banned from providing financial services for three years, and another for 12 months, at the hands of the corporate regulator for various breaches of financial services laws.
Karen Holzheimer will not be able to provide financial services for the coming three years after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) found she had exposed investors to unacceptable risks through making representations about an investment vehicle she had not examined properly.
The corporate watchdog alleged that between July 2004 and January 2006, while she worked as an adviser for a securities dealer, Holzheimer recommended Terra Nova Cache as a good investment to clients with unreasonably high returns.
Terra Nova Cache was described as the official bank of the Principality of Camside, a region that considered itself the only legal government of Australia.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) had earlier in the year secured Federal Court orders prohibiting Terra Nova Cache from holding itself out as a ‘bank’ and from any persons associated with the organisation from receiving deposits from the public.
ASIC has also banned Ian Dennis, a former authorised representative of Tandem Financial Advice, from providing financial advice for one year on the basis that he had not adhered to financial services laws and in the regulator’s opinion was unlikely to do so in the future.
The breaches of law allegedly took place between May 2004 and November 2005 and were discovered via an ASIC investigation that followed up a report compiled by Tandem regarding Dennis’ activities throughout that period.
The regulator found Dennis had failed to either issue a statement of advice (SOA) at all or at least within the timeframe required to four clients, had failed to quote commissions he received from income protection insurance advice for one client as a dollar amount, and that an SOA provided to a client in relation to a superannuation rollover was deficient.
In addition it was determined by ASIC that he failed to disclose termination and exit fees while advising two clients about superannuation rollover, failed to keep records that would have allowed Tandem as the licensee to ensure Denis was complying with his duties as an authorised representative, and issued clients with documents that were inaccurate and contained inconsistencies.
