Gold Coast-based advisers  Trent Allan and Fabrizio Urrutia  have  each  copped a five-year ban for breaching financial services  laws, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced.

ASIC says it has reason to believe the duo are not adequately trained or competent to provide financial services including life insurance advice.

The corporate regulator says they  provided advice without  a thorough investigation of  clients’  needs and objectives and in many  cases  they  did not make adequate enquiries about their clients’ existing superannuation and insurance products.

“Their advice also failed to provide appropriate reasoning for recommending the replacement of existing products,” ASIC said in a statement.

“ASIC found that, in providing this advice,  [they]  failed to act in the best interests of their clients and  prioritised  their own interests over their clients’ interests.

“ASIC also found that advice documents, comparing the existing and recommended products, were materially misleading.”

ASIC says the pair  were  authorised  representatives of Australian financial services licensee Financial Masterplan from  June  24 2016 to May 25 this year. They were also involved in the activities of Vision  Wealth Group,  a corporate  authorised representative of Financial Masterplan.

According to ASIC,  Vision Wealth  set up a  website called  Australian Super Search  to attract clients by helping them  find their lost super through the  Australian Tax Office’s  free service.

ASIC says the pair used the  search results to provide clients with superannuation consolidation and insurance advice, and a number of clients were signed up to an ongoing service arrangement.

In a separate announcement, ASIC says  it has banned  Timothy William Parry and Damian Garnet Price of Lismore-based North Coast Financial Services  from controlling a financial services business or performing any function as an officer of an entity that carries on a financial services business for six years.

ASIC says it issued the ban after it found they had breached their corporate duties in a number of areas such as failing to take sufficient steps to ensure the business complied with financial services laws.

North Coast Financial Services has been an authorised representative of Millennium 3 since  February 2004 and is authorised to provide financial product advice and deal in financial products.

Mr Parry was sole director and secretary of the business between September 4 2008 and October 15 last year while Mr Price was an officer at all relevant times.

ASIC says they  each have the right to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review of the regulator’s decisions.