Late last month, WGI was placed into voluntary administration, with its director, Graham Kinder, stating he had released fellow WGI director Peter Wood and all of the group’s advisers with all outstanding commissions paid.
At the time of the administrator’s appointment, the WGI director said enough funds were left in the dealer group bank to pay any remaining commissions and expenses.
Less than a week after IFA ran an article on WGI falling into administration, the phone started ringing.
One call, from an anonymous source, suggested adviser commissions had not been paid, with commission payments of close to $1 million still outstanding.
A former WGI financial adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity also claimed there were outstanding commission payments, with WGI directors yet to pay him more than $80,000, with another yet to receive more than $60,000 in unpaid commissions.
Another former WGI adviser, who refused to give his name, said he was surprised by suggestions that the only reason the dealer group was placed into administration was because the firm was low on funding, particularly when the firm was getting close to $25,000 a month through [one] book of business.
“A fair whack of that seems to have disappeared since [new directors] took over and that was definitely still Wright Global when [they] took over, because the previous director [Mark Schroeder] had discussions with us about managing those clients for him for Wright Global because they need an adviser to look after them,” the adviser said.
“So [the new directors] should have had that money coming in, all the adviser fees coming in, so how [they] can say they didn’t have enough money – it seems that [they] burnt a lot of money taking Mark Schroeder to court.”
Neither WGI’s last known director, Graham Kinder, nor former WGI chief executive Mark Schroeder were available to comment on the allegations.
Though, interestingly, it appears the fall of WGI will be shrouded in mystery a little longer, as the allegations are believed to have come from a number of former advisers now licensed under financial advisory group iPraxis.
Unconfirmed reports suggest iPraxis is Schroeder’s new dealer group.
Are you a former WGI adviser? Have your commissions been paid?
As an adviser, what are your thoughts about another financial planning group collapsing?
