Lost super in Shield or First Guardian?

MWL Financial Services: the lead decision found the advice failed to consider several issues in the Shield product disclosure statement, including unclear fee disclosure, the financing structure and potential debt use within the fund, and shared directorship between the responsible entity and the investment manager. The case involved a joint Self-Managed Super Fund (SMSF) and trauma-insurance structure.

FSGA: ASIC alleges Mr Merhi signed more than 6,000 Statements of Advice over a three-year period; the Federal Court extended his travel restraint to 31 March 2026. The FSGA lead decision concerned an adviser at 5 Point Financial Planning who recommended a complainant roll over $241,994.03 from Aware Super into a fund holding 60% Shield and First Guardian. AFCA found a direct loss of $196,249.17 and ordered FSGA to compensate, less any liquidator returns.

UGC: the lead decision noted that the recommended investment lacked diversification and that people were being placed into a single fund where, “if this specific investment did not perform, close to the entirety of [the complainant’s] superannuation could be impacted or lost.”

InterPrac:$118,931.15 plus interest from September 2025, ordered after Macquarie had returned the capital. (AFCA’s approach in the InterPrac determinations is under Federal Court challenge and determinations are paused, see above.)

The same patterns appear across all five. AFCA’s Lead Ombudsman for Investments and Advice, Shail Singh, has stated, on the public record:

This is not my characterisation. It is the regulator’s, and AFCA’s.

The people caught up in this. Per the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)’s published figures: approximately 5,800 Australians in Shield, approximately 6,000 in First Guardian. Falcon Capital, First Guardian’s responsible entity, has been in liquidation since 9 April 2025; Ross Blakeley and Paul Harlond of FTI Consulting are the appointed liquidators. Keystone Asset Management, Shield’s responsible entity, is also in liquidation.

The complaint count. Of the about 3,429 Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) complaints lodged so far, 1,044 are against firms involved with Shield, 1,861 against firms involved with First Guardian (Professional Planner Licensee Summit, 11 June 2026).

Money already returned. Macquarie Investment Management Ltd(the super trustee for Macquarie’s Super Plan and Wrap) returned approximately $321 million to around 3,000 people in September 2025, after admitting it failed its duty by not placing Shield on a watch list. The Federal Court formalised those declarations on 20 March 2026 (ASIC release 26-053MR; original undertaking 25-215MR). Netwealth agreed in December 2025 to pay more than $100 million to over 1,000 First Guardian investors, also admitting Corporations Act contraventions (ASIC release 25-307MR).

Money still being pursued. ASIC v Equity Trustees Superannuation Limited (over Shield, ASIC release 25-176MR) and ASIC v Diversa Trustees Limited (over First Guardian, ASIC release 25-296MR). On 23 February 2026, ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland told the Professional Planner Advice Policy Summit: “At present, we’ve got nearly 50 staff working on 26 investigations, involving matters that are either before the courts or are ongoing investigations, involving numerous entities and individuals connected to Shield and First Guardian.”

Two of the names in the diagram above are easy to confuse: the super trustee and the responsible entity. It is worth a minute to separate them, because each one is a separate respondent in your case and a separate complaint route.

Your money does not sit in a single company. It travels through a small chain. A super trustee (sometimes called the platform) is the company that legally holds your super and runs the member account. Macquarie, Netwealth, Equity Trustees and Diversa are super trustees. They are the gatekeepers: they choose which investment options sit on the platform menu, and they have a duty to keep unsafe ones off it.

A responsible entity (RE) is the company that operates the fund itself, the investment vehicle your money was placed into. Shield was operated by Keystone Asset Management. First Guardian was operated by Falcon Capital. Both Keystone and Falcon Capital are responsible entities; both are now in liquidation. A fund of this kind is called a managed investment scheme (MIS) under the Corporations Act, and the RE is the company legally accountable for how that scheme is operated.

The short version, in plain Australian:

• Super trustee: picks the menu and watches over the menu (Macquarie, Netwealth, Equity Trustees, Diversa).
• Responsible entity: runs the dish (Keystone for Shield, Falcon Capital for First Guardian).
• Advice firm: picked which dish you ate (InterPrac, MWL, FSGA, UGC, NGA, or others).

Each one is a separate respondent, and each one is a separate complaint route. That is why one complaint is rarely the whole story.

The federal Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR) can pay up to $150,000 per AFCA determination where the firm is insolvent and the determination relates to personal financial advice (and certain other regulated activities). CSLR does not cover managed investment schemes, meaning complaints against Falcon Capital and Keystone are heard by AFCA, but recovery (if any) comes through the liquidations rather than the federal backstop.

In practice:

• An advice firm still trading (InterPrac is the one here not in liquidation): in principle it pays AFCA determinations directly, but InterPrac is contesting AFCA in the Federal Court and has delayed paying, so a direct payout is not assured.
• Insolvent advice firm (UGC, NGA, MWL with its licence cancelled): CSLR backstops up to $150,000 for each determination.
• Platform / trustee complaints: paid by the trustee. Some have already paid (Macquarie, Netwealth); others are still being pursued by ASIC (Equity Trustees, Diversa).
• Complaints against the funds themselves: heard by AFCA, but recovery flows through the liquidation as a creditor claim rather than via the CSLR.

The maths, the ‘but-for’ test.AFCA does not ask “how much did you put in.” It asks a different question: where would your super be today but for the bad advice. The gap between where it actually is, and where it would have been in a properly chosen fund, is your loss. The arithmetic is published, sections 2.1 and 2.2 of the AFCA Approach to Calculating Loss in Financial Advice Complaints (December 2023). It is the same one AFCA’s own panels use to decide cases like yours, including the InterPrac lead decision that ordered $118,931.15 plus interest.

The eight inputs.The calculation needs eight numbers from you. Four describe what actually happened: your rollover amount, the rollover date, any compensation already received, and your residual balance today. Four describe the counterfactual: your prior fund and option, that option’s published, audited returns over the period (sourced from APRA MySuper data or Chant West choice-product data), the next-tier comparator where AFCA does not have your specific prior-option data, and interest from the date of loss.

The double-check, two calculators, AFCA finalises.I run two separate calculators. One I built. One I built independently to check the first. They have to agree to the cent or I won’t release the document. The final number isn’t mine to say, AFCA finalises it from your actual transaction history. What I give you is the work that gets you there, fully documented, every number traceable.

Every page of the document carries the methodology version, the AFCA decisions it relies on by case number, and a “verified” or “unverified” marker on every figure you provided. An independent reviewer with the audit trail can reconstruct every figure from your inputs to the final number. I read every email and reply within two business days. You will not get a stranger or a bot replying. If the calculators disagree by even a single cent, I would sit down with your case personally before the document ships.

The system refuses what it cannot do properly.If your case has a feature the methodology cannot handle accurately, a fund I do not yet have audited returns for, a date range outside the validated period, a respondent type without a published AFCA lead decision, the system tells you upfront. It does not guess. Both calculators are tested every release against AFCA’s five published Shield-era lead decisions; the FSGA lead decision (case 12-25-283219) is the single ACCEPT anchor my calculators have to reproduce before any document is sent. I keep that register current.

What I am describing is how a careful internal audit team would build a compliance tool. The difference is that I have built it for one purpose only: preparing your AFCA complaint to the standard AFCA’s panels themselves use to decide cases like yours.

That residual is the lost growth (what your money would have earned in a properly chosen fund), plus interest from the date of loss, plus, where appropriate, an amount for non-financial loss.

Two years ago, you handed your super to someone whose job was to look after it. Last year, the platform sent you a portion of your capital back and you assumed that was the end of it. That’s exactly what AFCA’s InterPrac decision tells us isn’t the end of it. The advice firm is a separate respondent, and that complaint is the one that recovers the residual loss. InterPrac was ordered to pay $118,931.15 plus interest after Macquarie had already returned the capital.

If you’re one of the 4,000 the platforms paid back, AFCA’s InterPrac decision is the precedent that tells you the complaint against the advice firm is still live. First one’s free.

AFCA’s Approach to calculating loss in financial advice complaints (December 2023, sections 2.1 and 2.2) measures something different from “how much did you put in?” It measures the gap between where your super is now and where it would have been if you had received appropriate advice in the first place, what AFCA calls the “but-for” calculation.

The methodology is published. It is the same arithmetic AFCA’s panels use to decide cases like yours. Your prior fund’s actual returns are the comparator where AFCA has the data; where it does not, AFCA falls back to the next-tier comparator (a respondent-fund equivalent or an SR50 industry index). The calculation walks your actual cash flows over the period, deducts compensation already received, and produces a residual figure.

In the InterPrac case, the panel found that the advice itself caused harm above and beyond what the platform had returned. That residual was the firm’s responsibility. The same logic applies to FSGA, MWL, UGC, NGA, and to InterPrac. InterPrac is the one firm in that list not in liquidation, but it is contesting AFCA in the Federal Court and has delayed paying determinations, so its solvency is not a guaranteed payout.

1. You fill out the form. About 15 minutes. From your phone if that is easier.
2. By 4pm tomorrow, you receive a real, lodgeable PDF, plus an email walking you through AFCA’s portal step by step. The blocks of text you need to paste into AFCA’s online form sit in light grey boxes inside that email, with a one-click copy button beside each one.
3. You read the document. You change anything you want. If something is wrong, you email me and I reply personally.
4. When you are ready, you lodge the complaint yourself at afca.org.au. AFCA’s Rule A.1.3 confirms complainants do not need paid representation to lodge or pursue a complaint; AFCA’s portal is free; you do not need to pay anyone (including me) to use it.
5. AFCA usually writes back within about five business days with a case number. Keep it somewhere safe. It’s how you’ll follow your own complaint from here.
6. If the firm makes a settlement offer, that is handled through AFCA after lodgement, not through me.
7. Reply to me by email any time, throughout. graham@grahammarsland.com.

In March 2026, AFCA announced that no insolvent firm involved in this collapse will be expelled, extending those firms’ AFCA memberships with no fixed end date so investors could still lodge. That extension exists because so few of us have lodged.

It can be revisited.

Your clock started the day you first knew of the loss. For most of the Shield and First Guardian cohort, that was somewhere in 2022–2023. You have six years from that day, or two years from your last IDR letter, whichever is earlier. The window’s open. The reason AFCA extended it is that we haven’t been lodging fast enough.