The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has imposed more than $20,000 in fines on BT Funds Management (BTFM) following two infringement notices relating to misleading statements in online advertising for BT Super.
The two fines relate to two separate online advertising campaigns that had misleading comparisons made by BT regarding its fund, and that of industry super funds. Each instance has costed BTFM $10,200.
ASIC said the first infringement notice resulted from online search results that produced the statement that “BT Super Has Outperformed Industry Super Funds Over the Last 5 Years*”, from the period of 26 June 2014 to 18 September 2014.
In the infringement notice ASIC stated it was concerned that “ordinary and reasonable consumers” were likely to be misled by claims that superannuation products issued by BT had generated greater returns than those generated by all industry super funds during the stated period.
“The representation was false or misleading because BT’s superannuation products had not generated greater returns during the stated period.”
ASIC said while the statement had an asterisk at the end it was not accompanied by any qualification or supporting information or a link to any such information.
ASIC stated the second infringement notice related to the use of the words “Industry Super Australia” in the headlines of BT advertisements which were also accessed via online searches during the period of 29 October 2014 to 17 November 2014.
The regulator said it was concerned the inclusion of those words in three different iterations could mislead consumers into believing that BT had an affiliation with Industry Super Australia (ISA), which has never been the case.
