Commonwealth Financial Planning must clean house
A Commonwealth Bank subsidiary, Commonwealth Financial Planning Ltd, must review its risk management system and regulatory compliance following complaints about the advice given by some of its planners.The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said yesterday that CFP had given an enforceable undertaking in relation to the matter.ASIC's chairman, Greg Medcraft, said in a statement: "This enforceable undertaking is significant as it requires CFP to comprehensively examine its risk management system to ensure non-compliance issues will be detected at the earliest possible stage and remedied."The matter goes back to November last year, when CFP agreed to compensate clients who received inappropriate advice from one of its advisers, Don Nguyen. In March this year Nguyen was disqualified from providing financial services for seven years.The regulator has an ongoing investigation into the conduct of several other former CFP advisers.ASIC said it was concerned there may have been underlying weaknesses in CFP's risk management framework. The enforceable undertaking says: "In particular, ASIC is concerned whether representative misconduct has been dealt with in a consistent manner, [whether] recurring themes have been appropriately identified, [whether] and reporting capabilities allow for early detection of advice process irregularities."As a result, ASIC considers that on occasion CFP may not have complied with certain of its obligations under the Corporations Act."