Sequoia’s clean hands message to advisers | Australian Markets

Sequoia Financial Group has sought to reassure its financial advisers whereas distancing itself from recommendations it could have had hyperlinks with the collapse Shield Master Fund and First Guardian Master Fund.

In a message to advisers signed off by Sequoia’a Head of Licensee and Adviser Services, the company asserted that its licensee, Interprac, was not related to the Shield and First Guardian merchandise or the lead era motion exercise round these merchandise.

However, the message does acknowledge that “those advisers who recommended some of these funds did acquire client leads from such lead generation businesses”.

The message to advisers comes amid persevering with investigatory exercise on the half of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and means that the advisers “may have become aware of some recent negative media, and we understand this may be raised within some of your client conversations”.

It then goes on within the following method:

To help you with such discussions we want to verify

• The product failures and what seems to be severe misconduct by the fund managers and accountable entities of Shield grasp Fund and First Guardian Master Trust investment merchandise have impacted many purchasers.
• A spread of accusations in some of the current articles attributed to the liquidators of the funds of financial irregularities or fraud within historic management and reporting of the funds will take time to precisely worth the remaining property to decide the top financial affect.
• The InterPrac licensee has been named in some of these press articles as 3 of our advice corporations really helpful the authorised and impacted funds. Venture Egg being the business with the best profile.
• There can also be some commentary round lead turbines and the position they performed on this scenario and Venture Egg and people advisers who really helpful some of these funds did purchase shopper leads from such lead era companies.

Under the heading of “What have we done to assist impacted clients” the message says “Interprac made the decision to terminate Venture Egg and bring the client book in-house so Sequoia Financial Advice could assist clients where required”.

“We follow the requirements of our IDR and EDR obligations of complaints management. We continue to support those clients who wish to deal with us. This is an ongoing issue and will likely take a long time to play out. Multiple parties such as Trustees, product issuers, Super providers, research providers, regulators in Australia and overseas and media outlets will all be advocating their positions and sharing their opinions for some time,” the message mentioned.

Under the heading “Was Interprac associated in any way with these products or associated with the lead generator?” the message states: “No,  the merchandise weren’t associated to our Licensee and had been accessed by a vary of investment and superannuation platforms. The lead generator business was not half of our licensee.

“The funds had been authorised by every trustee independently and held 3.75 scores effectively after Interprac eliminated such merchandise kind our authorised checklist.

On events the place we do look to take away product from our authorised checklist regardless of such merchandise from time to time holding robust impartial analysis scores, we do that with out prejudice,” the message mentioned.