Response to The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 September 2014

In an article published by The Sydney Morning Herald on 20 September 2014, claims were made about Macquarie Private Wealth and financial adviser competency tests.

Macquarie stands by all its previous statements to The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) which relate to Macquarie Equities Limited, trading as Macquarie Private Wealth (MPW), including that of 3 August, 2014 which stated: “with regard to the unattributed claims made about circulation of answers to competency examinations by management, Macquarie has examined the claim and found no evidence of it”.

Further, the reporter claims only to have seen the document and has offered no further detail, nor provided Macquarie with a copy of the document or any information that validates its bona fides. If it does exist, Macquarie encourages the SMH to provide the document to Macquarie and ASIC so that it can be properly investigated.

Specifically, and as stated previously to the SMH, in relation to adviser training, Macquarie’s work is ongoing and includes:

• together with the implementation of FoFA regulatory changes, making significant investment in new processes, practices and systems – approx. $A49m over two years (forecast at July 2014)
• technology to support the supervision and training of advisers
• new adviser assessments
• 11,500 hours in face-to-face adviser training  to date (including FoFA and other training)
• supervised compliance knowledge assessment for advisers and the implementation of external compliance training

Macquarie notes that, in relation to the Enforceable Undertaking entered into between MPW and ASIC in January 2013, ASIC Commissioner, Peter Kell, told an August 15  press conference that: "the undertaking is a very comprehensive undertaking in this case covering all aspects of MEL’s operations, compliance framework, training, the remediation program itself, so there is a very considerable amount of work to be done. We are satisfied with the progress of the work..."