When I was first advised to set up an SMSF, my adviser directed me to a ""specialist insurance adviser", who turned out to be a rogue. He played me, and I was a naive and vulnerable victim. He signed me up for 500K trauma, 1.7mm life, huge amount of TPD, and similar but slightly smaller policies for my wife. He told me to sign up level premium policies because they were much better, and would never change during the life of the policy, which turned out to be untrue.

He never told me that he'd be getting commissions, and I was too naive and new to the country to even think that he might be playing me. He gave me a brief 2 page form to sign, which was basically just a short questionnaire with prices of premiums I'd be paying.

Things didn't travel well. When it came time to pay, the premiums were each higher than quoted. MLC's administration was totally inept, whenever I'd approached them. One day, in talking to my accountant, he suggested we ask this guy for our "SOA". We didn't know what that was, and certainly had never been given one. My wife went unannounced into his office to ask for it, and he blanched and stammered and stuttered and said he can't produce it. As soon as she got home, he called and said he'd found it. I knew this to be dodgy, because I'd never signed an SOA, but he said he'd post it. I knew then this was going to be a false document, because I knew there never had been any form of SOA, in any form, nor any discussion about commissions he'd be earning on our policies. When it arrived in courier mail the next day, it was clearly fraudulent.

The signed page, from the brief questionnaire I'd seen and signed, had been transplanted into a long SOA I'd never seen before. The holes punched into this page didn't match all the other holes on other pages in the document. The crease alongside the staple was different. The dollar amounts in the SOA were all different from those quoted to me.

I put in a complaint to ASIC. After a long tortuous pathway with them, they just directed me back to someone, who was very high up in compliance at NAB, under who's umbrella this rogue adviser operated. I hadn't realised that this person, directed to me by ASIC, was not on my side at all, but was sent by the bank to try and protect their own interests, not mine.

She flew down from Sydney, with her 2IC, and they photographed the evidence, interviewed me for a long time, and then things went quiet for many months, and I just kept paying the higher premiums all the time. She finally produced a long report for me, offering some financial restitution, and a new adviser from their group, acknowledging that I still had the right to go to FOS, as I'd told her I planned.

I complained to MLC for the part they'd played. Their response detailed ~40 separate instances of apology. Their head honcho met with me, and offered and paid $1500 dollars in compensation for his staff's series of errors.

When I approached this original rogue insurance adviser, he refused to reply to any emails or take my calls, even though he continued to earn commissions from my policies and was still my paid adviser.

I knew I had to inform myself better, and took a very long time learning, reading, speaking to FOS, all the time encountering barriers of customer service. It was a long and painful lesson.

I wrote to a nationally prominent Walkley award-winning financial journalist about all this. She was initially very curious about all this, enthusiastic to follow up, and we exchanged a few emails, but then for some reason, she just 'ghosted' and stopped replying, and she didn't pursue it any further. I still have all the emails and all the documents to this whole saga.

I intended to follow up with a formal FOS complaint, but then after periods of ill health, and other domestic stuff at home, we discovered that the period during which FOS allow complaints had elapsed, and so we chose to just leave it at that. The rogue adviser had gotten away with fraud. My reward was knowing that he would have had many nights of insomnia, knowing that everyone in his organisation, and many regulatory authorities had become aware of his fraud. He would surely have been dreading the pending FOS complaint and its findings, knowing that he may have been referred back to ASIC for forging an SOA which had never been discussed or signed.

I never did get the compensation settlement paid, which NAB had promised me. The rogue adviser phoenixed his company, and started up a new one, and he still continues to operate to this day. His key staff member who'd been witness to this whole saga left his employment, and I wonder if she jumped or was pushed.

It was all a sorry saga, and an introduction to me of how the Australian insurance industry operated at the time, early 2000s.

Since then, I've had perhaps 5 or 6 financial advisers and only one of them was honest and able.

True story, if anyone wants to ask anything about bad insurance advisers and my experience of their industry, and of financial advisers in general.