The corporate watchdog stated it had cancelled the licence because the company is no longer operating a financial services business and had entered liquidation.
MyPlanner Professional had held the AFS licence no. 425542 since 18 September 2012, with the cancellation taking effect on 23 June.
Jason Bettles, of Worrells Solvency & Forensic Accountants, was appointed as a liquidator to MyPlanner Professional on 11 June.
The group’s licence was frozen in February, when ASIC suspended MyPlanner Professional’s AFSL for 10 weeks due to compliance concerns.
MyPlanner Professional had applied to the AAT in February for a review of ASIC’s decision, and the tribunal granted a stay of the regulator’s ruling on a few conditions.
On 9 June, the group withdrew its application for an appeal and the day after, the AAT discharged the stay order – allowing the ASIC suspension to come back into effect.
According to its website, MyPlanner Professional was a privately owned licensee group providing licensee services to financial planners, accountants and mortgage brokers.
US-based Anvia Holdings Corporation acquired a 95 per cent stake in the company in June last year, through its local fully owned subsidiary, Anvia (Australia).
MyPlanner Professional’s website stated it had 180 licensed professionals within the group.
ASIC recently also cancelled the licence of ACN 140 520 225, formerly known as MyPlanner Australia before it sold its advice business to MyPlanner Professional Services in 2017.
The licensee was placed into administration and a liquidator was appointed in November last year.
MyPlanner Australia’s cancellation had followed additional conditions being placed on it and MyPlanner Professional in 2017 as a result of ASIC surveillance.
The corporate watchdog had found some of the group’s advisers had not taken client circumstances into account when giving advice, had not completed sufficient analysis, had not clearly defined the scope of advice and had used generic reasoning when providing recommendations to clients.
The issue, apart from one rogue Advisory Firm, was ASIC. ASIC’s “Best Interests” isn’t even closely related to a client’s best interests. Clients don’t want lengthy and repetitive SoAs, FDSes, Opt-Ins or 70 page Fact Finds. They want advice, quick & efficient implementation and professional ongoing advice & management. None of these can be done effectively under ASIC’s guidelines, rules or policing, and it’s what results in Australian Financial Services becoming a joke on the international stage. Red tape = government jobs and more power to the likes of ASIC – nothing more, nothing less.
We have had a ‘number’ of MyPlanner related ex-clients come to us fairly recently and while they may have been doing an ok job (I can’t substantiate this as I know very little about MyPlanner and their operations), there was one advice practice in particular that was licensed by them that has probably been their reason for the downfall. This organisation went into liquidation quite a few months ago and I can assure you that there were some major, systemic issues with the advice they had provided, as well as the way the business was ran.
There was a pretty major compliance issue that bought all of this on.
Who?…
This Industry has gone mad, total and utter mad???
The corporate watchdog, wow and they are experienced in giving advice. What you are saying is if the client chooses not to provide all information then you have not taken all considerations into account. Impossible to provide advice
The FASEA standards are all bees wax –
The watchdogs assessment is a kaleidoscope of pill popping party going???
You need to licensed in Real estate, Finance, general insurance, stock broking, financial planning and a professor in google to give sound advice???
The corporate watchdog had found some of the group’s advisers had not taken client circumstances into account when giving advice, had not completed sufficient analysis, had not clearly defined the scope of advice and had used generic reasoning when providing recommendations to clients.
I’m sorry I’ve never met a single client who doesn’t provide their financial information if you ask for it and if by some miracle you’re getting ALL the people who do why take them as clients? If they’re not willing to be open with you, do you really want them?
You would not know if they did not tell you
Many more experienced investors/clients around the world aren’t used to having to provide everything including the size of their underwear before being allowed to have the opinion of a specialist on whether it’s a good time to buy a particular stock, or invest in a managed fund. Australia’s rules and regulations are hampering an already struggling industry and cause most of the advice we provide to be inefficient and not give clients what they want nor what they need. No one needs to wait several weeks to receive advice in a form they don’t want or wish to read. They want advice and action.
Anyone know what happened here?
They didn’t have sufficient staff to monitor compliance, and their processes were poor. They were working on skeleton staff, and the previous owners/ compliance staff didn’t have appropriate resources like standard Fact finds, Risk Profiles, SoA Templates and checklists. The advice wasn’t terrible, they just didn’t have the processes in place and ASIC had enough. They were also a long way behind in Audits.
Sounds like the old, not enough auditors auditing the auditors scenario. Kill them off in red tape. Just to raise a point, can I suggest your reference to “poor processes” is ASIC expectation that we all operate like a ASX 200 company, which is always frustrating given ASIC has different standards when it comes to punishing those firms. Recently I heard of ASIC cancelling the licensee of a 2 person AR firm where the advisers worked in an open plan office and it was held there was insufficient supervision.
Phillippa
A reasonable group (everyone group has its pros and cons) that was ran into the ground by the previous owners. When Philippa left they bumped up adviser fees massively – dropped off services, brought in-house assets onto the APL and seemed to run it purely to make short term profit margins look good. Then 12 months after Philippa left they flicked it to poor old Anvia for a cool $4.4 million and the scuttled shell of the business blew up / imploded shortly thereafter…now worth NIL. Truly underhanded behaviour, everyone got thrown under the bus here for a quick buck, classic buyer beware story! That’s the story in a nutshell!