Australia Ramps Up Wealth Management Crackdown

Josh O'Neill

19 January 2018

Australia has banned a former Commonwealth financial planning advisor from the industry for five years after an investigation found she forged documentation and failed to fulfil her fiduciary duty.

The (ASIC) banned Kimberley Holgate, of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, after it discovered she had cut clients’ signatures from documents held on file and pasted them onto new forms.

ASIC added that Holgate “did not act in the best interests of her clients when advising they rollover their existing super to a new product issued by Colonial First State, a related entity of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia”, and “failed to prioritise the interests of her clients when advising them to acquire financial products which entitled her, her employer and its related entities to a financial benefit”.

Holgate has the right to appeal ASIC’s decision.

The ban is part of the watchdog’s wealth management project, it said, which was launched in October 2014 “to lift the standards of major financial advice providers”. It focuses on the conduct of the largest financial advice firms – NAB, Westpac, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Macquarie and AMP.

Under the initiative, ASIC has banned 40 advisors in total. This publication has spoken to the organisation in the past about its efforts to clean up the country's wealth management sector.