A senior planner at the National Australia Bank who cheated on his third attempt to pass a basic compliance exam has been found guilty of breaching an industry code.
Shylesh Sriranjan was expelled this week from the Financial Planning Association after the industry found in December that he swapped exam papers during the test, sparking an urgent review of his client files.
Inquiry heats up
NAB boss Andrew Thorburn has been questioned at the parliamentary banking inquiry over targeting customers and the financial planning scandal.
He stopped working for NAB in late December following the FPA adjudication.
His expulsion comes after an expose by Fairfax Media in 2014 revealed financial planners, most notably at Macquarie Bank had been routinely cheating on compliance exams using a cheat sheet dubbed inside the industry as the Penske file in reference to a famous Seinfeld episode.
In a case of cheating gone wrong, Mr Sriranjan was tripped up when the examiners noticed there were two candidates who had the same incorrect answers.
Mr Sriranjan was among 121 candidates to sit the 70-question exam in Melbourne in 2015. He had been made to sit the test after failing two earlier attempts as a requirement of keeping his job.
Mr Sriranjan, along with other people repeating the test, was given an extra hour to complete the test but still struggled to finish in time and had to race through the last questions.
According to the FPA Conduct Review Commission panel ruling on the matter, Mr Sriranjan changed the answers to 26 questions after checking the exam paper of another person completing the test.
The planner denied cheating and said the answers may have been similar because he and the person he was accused of swapping papers with had prepared for the test together.
The panel dismissed Mr Sriranjan's version of events.
"The Panel finds most of Mr Sriranjan's explanations unconvincing and implausible as to why he changed his answers to questions," the panel found.
"Most explanations make so little sense they also, unfortunately, give the panel little confidence as to Mr Sriranjan's capacity to perform work as a financial planner," the panel added.
Fairfax Media understands that NAB has started a separate investigation that includes reviewing Mr Sriranjan's client files.
A spokesman for the bank said: "NAB is committed to doing the right thing by our customers and if we identify any issues with the advice, we will immediately take action to resolve these."
Fairfax Media was unable to locate Mr Sriranjan.
FPA chief executive Dante De Gori said any breach of the association's code has the capacity to undermine the reputations of all members.