Risk advice still an area of concern: ASIC

Speaking at the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia's (ASFA’s) ‘Advice within super’ conference in Sydney, ASIC deputy chairman Peter Kell said even after its review of the industry there continues to be evidence of poor behaviour by advisers in the retail life insurance sector.

“In terms of ASIC’s ongoing work, this is a real test for the industry because we continue to see problematic life insurance advice in our surveillance work,” Mr Kell said.

“We are seeing it out there at the moment and there will be further cases down the track.

“Subsequent to the report we imposed licence conditions on the licence of the Guardian advice firm following a surveillance which uncovered serious deficiencies in the advice provided to retail clients. So this is an area we are continuing to work on,” he said.

Mr Kell also conceded that the regulator has not done enough to take action against the executives and managers of advice businesses, instead focusing on the “frontline” when poor advice occurs.

“On several occasions we have had some blunt discussions with [firms] about some of their managers and executives that have been involved in [poor behaviour] but there hasn’t been a lot.

“We have made an argument that it would be much better and much more cost-effective for us to have more direct powers, like they have in the UK, to take banning action and other relevant actions against executives [and] managers,” he said.