AAT mitigates adviser's permanent ban

The permanent banning of financial adviser Todd Karamian, who faked his exam result, has been slashed to seven years upon appeal.

ASIC banned Todd Karamian in March 2023 after the Bluepoint Consulting chief executive and co-founder altered his Financial Adviser Certificate from a 'fail' to 'pass'.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) overruled ASIC's decision on June 25.

Justice Kyrou argued the Karamian had a "low risk" of engaging in conduct such as forgery of a document or misleading ASIC in the future.

This is on top of Karamian accepting responsibility and remorse and the fact that his conduct did not cause any financial loss to any of his clients.

Although he benefitted financially from his wrongdoing, Justice Kyrou said "his financial benefit was not at the expense of anyone else."

Karamian sat the exam only once on 13 November 2021. One month later, when he found out he failed it, he downloaded the exam statement and typed 'pass' over 'fail'.

He then emailed Bluepoint responsible manager Tony Bates a screenshot of the falsified exam statement.

Bates then updated the Financial Advisers Register (FAR) to reflect a 'pass' result for Karamian.

Karamian co-founded Bluepoint over 21 years ago, a self-licensed firm based in North Sydney. Prior to that he had stints with Strategic Capital Management, Perpetual and ipac.

ASIC found he provided personal advice to 11 retail clients after failing the mandatory adviser exam.

Justice Kyrou said: "In order to uphold the integrity of the industry and those objectives, it is essential that the period of the banning order which is made in relation to the applicant is sufficiently lengthy to convey to others who are in the industry - or aspire to join it - that conduct of the type engaged in by him will result in a lengthy banning period, so as to deter them from engaging in such conduct."