Rowena Orr, counsel assisting the royal commission, introduced the first case study yesterday (19 April) to illustrate inappropriate advice provided by a Westpac senior financial adviser. First in the witness box was former Westpac client Jacqueline McDowall, a registered nurse, who with her truck driver husband Hugh had intended to leave nursing and set up a bed and breakfast business to ease their way into retirement together,.The couple had estimated that they would need about $1 million.Their only major asset was a heavily mortgaged house in the Melbourne suburb of Narre Warren, along with the combined value of their industry super funds, which were Hesta and CBUS, respectively. This totalled about $200,000, and they hoped to use this in some way as equity.They saw financial adviser Krish Mahadevan, who advised them to immediately get their house valued, and sell it pay off debt - which included about $44,000 in car loans and $10,000 in credit card debt - and set up a self-managed super fund.The adviser also told them to take out insurance cover of $1 million each, much more than was being paid out of their employer super funds. Another business banker, Karl Sleiman, told them they could borrow up to $2 millionMahadevan also had the couple roll their industry super into a SMSF and start paying income protection insurance, which totalled about $10,000 per month, even though no suitable B&B property was lined up, along with a total upfront cost of $5280, and ongoing advice cost of $3000 per annum.  Westpac was going to receive initial commissions, upfront commissions of $27,180, and Krish Mahadevan likely to receive a share of $16,690 flowing from this advice.But then it turned out that the plan was never going to work as a residence cannot be held in a SMSF, and Sleiman told the McDowalls that far from the $2 million he had said at the start, Westpac would only loan $$200,000.The McDowalls then faced a year-long fight for compensation, some of which still has not been paid into the correct account, and most of it eaten up in additional expenses.Michael Wright, national head of BT Finance, was next in the witness box and was challenged over aspects of the McDowall's case. He confirmed that both Mahadevan and Sleiman were still employed by Westpac but were not giving evidence on this case.Orr was quickly onto the attack:"Let me put this to you:  there's nothing in the statement of advice about the possibility that Mr and Mrs McDowall could have deferred taking out the new policies until they had purchased the bed and breakfast and incurred the debt that the insurance was designed to protect?" Orr askedWright: "Yes, I agree."Orr then went on to gather a series of concessions from Wright that this was poor advice, particularly the push to take out large amounts of insurance before a business had been settled on, as was the setting up of a SMSF.After taking Wright through the methods of bonus calculation, which showed the Westpac