This was published 7 years ago
Former Westpac planner Sudhir Kumar Sinha cops five-year ban
By Clancy Yeates
A former Westpac financial planner has been slapped with a five-year ban after it was revealed 177 clients had been charged fees without receiving all the services they had paid for.
It comes as the Finance Sector Union hits out at plans by the banks to enforce background checks of employees across the industry, saying it unfairly blamed workers for cultural problems at the banks.
Westpac said is welcomed the ban imposed on its former planner.Credit: Jesse Marlow
Sudhir Kumar Sinha, who worked at Westpac until 2014, was this week banned from providing financial services until 2020, the latest move in a crackdown on the wealth businesses of the major banks.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said the planner had "systematically" failed to meet his obligations to provide ongoing advice to paying clients, over a period of six years.
Further, an investigation by the watchdog found he had not been adequately trained, and determined he was likely to break financial services laws in the future.
The bank, which had reported the planner to ASIC, has paid back $1.47 million to customers of the planner.
"ASIC is committed to improving conduct in the wealth management industry and we will act to remove advisers who do not live up to the high standards expected of financial advisers," ASIC's deputy chair, Peter Kell, said.
A spokesman for Westpac's wealth management arm, BT Financial Group, said the bank welcomed the banning order.
"We terminated Mr Sinha's employment with us more than two years ago," he said.
"BT detected the problem, we reported it to ASIC in 2015, co-operated with its investigation, and we are remediating all affected customers."
The banning is part of ASIC's rolling project aimed at lifting standards in the country's largest financial advice businesses, including those owned by the big four banks, Macquarie and AMP.
A recurring concern of ASIC's has been the failure of banks to provide all the services for which they were charging fees.
An update last month said the big four banks were set to pay more than $200 million in compensation for failing to provide advice while charging customers fees for the service.
On Thursday the Australian Bankers' Association announced a new voluntary protocol that would see misconduct breaches shared between signatory banks.
But the union said the real problems in the industry stemmed from unfair sales targets set by management, not so-called bad apples.
"Our members simply don't trust the industry to administer such a system fairly," FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano