If you have suffered losses as a result of negligent or bad investment advice provided by banks or financial planners, you may be entitled to claim damages to recoup losses plus whatever you should have earned if the funds were properly invested. Senior Associate and litigation lawyer Charles Lethbridge looks at claims against banks and financial planners.
If you have suffered financial losses as a result of bad or incorrect financial planning advice, you may be entitled to claim damages for negligent advice that may have been provided to you.
In recent years there has been an explosion of people suffering significant losses as a result of negligent and in some cases fraudulent advice being provided by in-house financial planners. Many of the cases involved inexperienced financial planners working for the banks advising customers to invest in financial products that were owned by the bank. Not only were the planners claiming significant commissions from these investments, they were obviously in a conflict situation because they were advising the customers to invest in the bank’s financial products or companies owned by the banks.
These claims are not limited to the banks and there have been many cases of independent financial planning firms (including financial planners working within accountancy firms) who have also provided negligent investment advice to their clients. Once again, there are many cases of investment advisers telling their clients to invest in certain products which provided them with commissions and ongoing payments but were not a very good short or long term investment for the client.
Matters became so obvious that it led to one of the country’s biggest banks (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) setting up a compensation scheme for victims of financial planning bad advice. Most are sceptical as to the bona fides of the bank’s intentions for setting up the inquiry and providing proper compensation to the victims. Many think the scheme is a way of avoiding class actions and other expensive claims being made against them where lawyers are involved and act in the best interests of their clients.
At Attwood Marshall we have lawyers who specialise in this area and have acted in many cases against banks and other financial planning firms in claims for compensation. If you have suffered losses or are dealing with a bank or financial planner without legal representation, we suggest you contact us and receive some preliminary advice as to your prospects of success in a claim. In many cases we will accept the claim on a “no win no fee” basis after we have assessed the claim on your behalf as to prospects of success.
If you would like more information or want to obtain the best possible chance of a successful outcome in your dispute, please contact our Commercial Litigation Department Manager, Amanda Heather on direct line 07 5506 8245, email aheather@attwoodmarshall.com.au or free call 1800 621 071.
We have an experienced dedicated Commercial Litigation team that practice exclusively in these areas.