The number of banned licensees has risen by 56 per cent in the past 12 months, ASIC’s annual report for 2010 to 2011 has found.
The percentage equates to a total of 64 licence withdrawals for the period, the report said.
The types of conduct that resulted in the withdrawals included authorised representatives dishonestly taking advantage of their client relationships through fraud, and licensed financial advisers failing to take their clients’ personal circumstances into account in recommending products.
Other conduct that resulted in licence removal included cancelling of licences due to failure to maintain membership of the external dispute-resolution scheme, and engaging in credit activities while being either registered or not licensed by ASIC under its new credit regime.
However, despite the number or removals, FPA chief professional officer Deen Sanders said it is important not to turn the licence bans into something misrepresentative.
“It’s always good to have confidence in the regulator’s capacity to respond to potential issues of malpractice,” Sanders said.
“If you read more deeply into the report, it’s importantly worthwhile noting there’s been an incredible increase in credit licensees. Six thousand credit licensees have been put onto the books in the last 12 months so the total number of licensees in the marketplace is 10,800.
“If you think about the fact that ASIC are implying that only 64 licences were withdrawn, that’s less than half of 1 per cent.”
Sanders said another way of interpreting the data is to acknowledge that 99.95 per cent of the licensed marketplace is abiding by the law.
“That’s really worth emphasising,” he said.
“It could even be argued that this is a reduction in complaints against [financial planning] licensees because it’s not easy to see that data. That’s a challenge for us about the way that’s been reported.”
Sanders said ASIC’s complaints data suggests less than 48 per cent of all complaints span across the entire financial services industry.
“That includes MISs, product manufacturers, institutions, banks, the whole kit and caboodle,” he said.
“So you’ll have to accept that financial advice is clearly a smaller subset of that number, which means if you think about it that way, then in fact, 40 per cent of all complaints are against company directors in the wider company marketplace.”
He said the cancellations of licences are also due to the failure of maintaining membership of an external dispute resolution but believes it is more of an issue in relation to credit than Australian financial services licences.
The ASIC report also revealed that the total amount of $3.4 million from the Assetless Administration Fund (AAF) was fully utilised for the 2010-2011 period, funding Great Southern, Trio Capital and Allco Financial Group investigations. The scheme can grant a company’s fund liquidator with little or no assets to access funds to query potential breaches.
