ASIC continued its forensic pursuit of Westpac subsidiaries Westpac Securities Administration Limited and BT Funds Management Limited in the Federal Court yesterday. Several key principles have been developed over the course of the hearing, which is approaching the end of its allocated court time.The proceedings follow an ASIC investigation into Westpac's telephone sales campaigns targeting superannuation fund members, and were first flagged in December 2016. Specifically, ASIC's case set out 15 examples of alleged contraventions of the 'best interests duty' arising from during telephone campaigns instigated by WSAL and BTFM. These two businesses are not permitted to provide personal financial product advice under their Australian financial services licences.The major questions to be answered, therefore, centred on whether what was said to customers was a recommendation or statement of opinion.ASIC alleged that during the two telephone campaigns, WSAL and BTFM provided personal financial product advice to customers, specifically recommending that customers roll out of their other superannuation funds into their Westpac-related superannuation accounts. Further, ASIC alleges that the callers did not undertake a proper comparison of the superannuation funds and the fees involved as required by law.Counsel for ASIC took the court through the various interactions between a customer and a financial services provider to indicate which transactions are subject to a licence, and which are general advice.The principle at issue here is that general advice should never be provided in a way that will drive the outcome where the customer will act as if financial advice has been provided - in this case to drive the rollover of super accounts to BT.By way of example, he went to ASIC's Moneysmart webpage, which has pointers as to when and how to change a super fund; adding some dry humour - "what I can call the Valentines Day point: you expect to be with your super fund for a long time, so ask lots of questions …. before you get married…"ASIC's barrister also spent some time on the concept of "social proofing", asserting that it is akin to a recommendation within the terms of the Act as it aims to build empathy with the main aim of influencing an outcome - it is nevertheless intended to influence a rollover.ASIC also argued that, in contrast to some of BT's major competitors, at no point is the customer informed that they may not save on fees, and in fact may end up paying more.The case continues, with final summing up scheduled for tomorrow (16 February 2018).