The Financial Industry Complaints Service (FICS) expects an increase in complaints against financial advisers after the recent Westpoint case and a regulator’s report showing advisers have offered poor quality superannuation advice.

Last year FICS received 678 complaints – 310 regarding life insurance, 189 over financial planners, 92 for stockbrokers and 87 related to managed investments.

But FICS CEO Alison Maynard says while the number of complaints for last year was a marked drop on 2004, when 933 complaints were received, she expects totals in the future to be substantially higher based on experiences with the Westpoint case and the recent Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) “super survey” into financial advisers.

Ms Maynard says of the 245 telephone inquiries FICS has received from Westpoint investors, so far only 51 have been written complaints.

“But it is to be expected that there will be more complaints in relation to Westpoint over time,” she told Sunrise Exchange News.

She says the same situation is expected after ASIC’s report on the quality of advice given on superannuation.

“It is too early to see a big difference in super complaints as yet, given the legislation [on super choice] is only 10 months old.”

Over the next few years FICS expects to receive “many complaints” from people who have lost insurance cover after switching super funds.

ASIC’s super survey covered 259 individual advisers who were representatives of 102 Australian financial services licensees. The regulator found that only 21% of consumers were given insurance advice when switching funds.

It says advisers “need to give more consideration to insurance issues when advising on superannuation”.

“Selecting a suitable superannuation fund may depend on the client’s insurance needs as well as their investment needs,” the ASIC report said. “Clients can inadvertently lose insurance cover when switching funds or stopping contributions to a particular fund.”

As a result of the ASIC survey Westpac, the National Australia Bank and the Commonwealth Bank have written to their financial advisers detailing the types of questions they expect consumers to ask.