Report : Ted Baxter
Content : Storm clients, Storm targets retirees, Bernie Ripoll lies, FPA conference, baby boomer clients
Tuesday, 3rd January 2012
The good thing about a myth is that it is just that, a myth. Myths can be easily ‘confirmed’ or ‘busted’ simply by looking at the truth. The Plain Truth has conducted an extensive analysis of the age brackets of the Storm clients and illustrated the information in a graph which shows their age distribution.
There are more myths circulating about Storm than there are truths. Most such myths The Plain Truth has been able to source back to the CBA. Obviously it’s in CBA’s interest to create and perpetuate Storm myths in order to cover its own position. The CBA has used a number of techniques to promote myths about Storm, some of which include direct lies or better still half-truths. Other techniques involve the CBA remaining silent in the face of a convenient untruth circulating about Storm and at other times the CBA simply suggests a possibility and then encourages that possibility to grow into an apparent reality.
One particular myth which commenced in late 2008 involves the age group of the clients in the Storm customer base. The Plain Truth has been able to trace this myth back to its possible source, Edward Tait formerly of the Commonwealth Bank. The Plain Truth extensively surveyed the market place and numerous former Storm clients and has concluded that most of those surveyed believe that the Storm client base was overwhelmingly the elderly and frail. One example of the subtle propagation of this concept can be seen in a statement by Bernie Ripoll at a recent FPA conference. Ripoll said, “if, for example, a 73-year-old widow was sold a Storm-product with a 20 year horizon and a very highly leveraged model, then this was the wrong advice – not necessarily the wrong product”. Setting up an extreme example that would clearly be wrong advice if given and then linking it to Storm is not only deceptive but also misleading. Ripolls words clearly betray his thoughts even in his cunningly contrived extreme example. “Not necessarily the wrong product” is Ripoll code for – the product was OK thus supporting that CBA did nothing wrong. Whilst the phrases and words, ’73 year old’, ‘widow’, ‘20 year time horizon’, ‘highly leveraged’ and ‘was wrong advice’ were crafted to portray Storm as the villain. Ripoll has been a constant apologist for Norris and the CBA and a vilifier of Storm to the detriment of CBAs victims.
This age myth induced by the CBA and believed by many Storm clients, was a necessary prerequisite in creating the impression that Storms advice was inappropriate. The disaster which CBA created could only be explained in 1 of 2 ways – either a failure of the advice for which Storm was responsible OR a failure of the product for which CBA was responsible. It can never be in CBA’s interest to admit a product failure therefore it must encourage among many other things the ‘age myth’ of the Storm client base.
The good thing about a myth is that it is just that, a myth. Myths can be easily ‘confirmed’ or ‘busted’ simply by looking at the truth. The Plain Truth has conducted an extensive analysis of the age brackets of the Storm clients and illustrated the information in the following graph which shows the age distribution of Storms client base.
The percentage of Storm clients over 69 years of age totalled just 6.2%. What these figures don’t show which is even more significant is that on average 67% of all clients over 69 years of age had been Storm clients for 10+ years. In a surprising number of instances many had been clients for 20-40 years. This means many aged whilst being clients of Storm but in any case the data speaks for itself.
Myth : The Storm client base was mainly the elderly and vulnerable
The Plain Truth has been inundated from Storm clients with the question: What can we do to help? The following 2 actions each and every one of you should do.
1) Pass on the information on this website to as many people as possible.
– Family
– Friends
– Neighbours
– Your Professionals (e.g. dentist, doctor, accountant, financial planner, bank manager and bank staff)
– Politicians (local, state and federal)
– Anybody you can…
2) Contact Senator John Williams who is one of the good guys and direct him to the truth with the aim of reopening
the Parliamentary Inquiry. John can be contacted via email at [email protected] or 02 6721 4500 or 0427 029 918.
The Editor
The Plain Truth,
PO Box 2783
New Farm QLD 4005
Content : Storm clients, Storm targets retirees, Bernie Ripoll lies, FPA conference, baby boomer clients
Comments are closed.