Adelaide financial adviser Peter Chigwidden cops five-year ban

An Adelaide financial adviser has been banned for five years after failing to act in the best interests of his clients.

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An Adelaide financial adviser has been banned for five years after failing to act in the best interests of his clients.

Peter Anthony Chigwidden will be unable to provide financial services for the duration of the ban following an ASIC review of his financial advice.

ASIC found Mr Chigwidden “consistently failed to address the stated needs and objectives of his clients”.

“Where his advice included product switching recommendations, he made those recommendations without adequate consideration of the cost impact or other consequences of that advice, and failed to properly disclose the costs and consequences of the advice, leaving clients poorly informed,” ASIC said.

“Crucially, the switching advice also failed to demonstrate that the recommended product(s) better met the clients’ needs or objectives than their existing product(s).”

ASIC found Mr Chigwidden also failed, in some cases, to provide statements of advice and records of advice to clients when he was required to do so.

Where he did provide those advice documents, he failed to include specific information such as the fees and costs clients may incur if they followed his advice.

Mr Chigwidden’s LinkedIn profile lists him as a director of Mpac SA Pty Ltd, which operated from offices on Hutt St in the Adelaide CBD.

It identified Mr Chigwidden as having more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry.

His misconduct was notified to ASIC by Securitor Financial Group — a Westpac advice licensee — and his banning forms part of ASIC’s Wealth Management Project, which focuses on the conduct of Australia’s largest financial advice licensees — NAB, Westpac, CBA, ANZ, Macquarie and AMP.

As part of the project, ASIC has banned 54 advisers and one director from the financial services industry, including Adelaide adviser Tai Thanh Nguyen and ex-Macquarie Equities Adelaide advisers Mark Landau and Marcus Campbell.