A financial adviser whose instructions left a client without life insurance cover, and their spouse later missed out on a payout, has been permanently banned by the regulator from providing financial services.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) says ACT-based adviser Jane Myers advised her client to roll over existing life insurance to a newly established self-managed super fund she had guided the client to set up.

As a result, the client lost their life insurance cover, and as a result some time later the client’s spouse did not receive a life insurance payout.

ASIC carried out surveillance of Ms Myers when she was an authorised representative of Spectrum Wealth Advisers between October 2013 and March 2017.

“ASIC found Ms Myers is not adequately trained or competent to provide financial services and that she is likely to contravene a financial services law in the future,” the regulator says. “Her conduct demonstrated serious incompetence and irresponsibility.”

The advice was not in her clients’ best interests or appropriate to their circumstances, ASIC says.

Ms Myers failed to identify her clients’ relevant circumstances, investigate whether the self-managed super fund would achieve the clients’ financial objectives beyond their desire to purchase property, reasonably inform her clients of all associated costs of holding a property within such a fund and provide her clients with statements of advice.

"Advisers are required to act in the best interests of their clients, not simply implement their clients’ instructions,” ASIC says.

Spectrum Wealth’s licence was cancelled in February.