KEY POINTS:
The 6am news brought shattering news for a Whangarei couple one morning last July.
Bridgecorp Finance Company had collapsed, and taken with it their entire savings - $221,000.
Their shock and anger were compounded by the fact they were about to withdraw most of the money to put toward building a new house. The investment was three weeks off maturing.
The two had already started the building project and have been forced to put the house they are living in on the market to complete the new one.
They are among 26 Northlanders believed to have collectively lost $3.2 million in the Bridgecorp collapse. A meeting was held for them in Whangarei yesterday.
The couple had unquestioningly followed the advice of a financial adviser at the Whangarei branch of a nationwide insurance, financial advisory and superannuation provider to invest the entire sum in Bridgecorp.
So did a Whangarei widow in her late seventies, who has been so traumatised by losing about $25,000 she has contemplated taking her life - "I have gone and looked at the river."
She says the betrayal of trust by the adviser is as bad as losing the money.
"He knew I had money to invest and he targeted me. He chased me for the business and I trusted him," she says. Now she feels too embarrassed to tell her friends and is very frightened.
"I'm frightened because now I have nothing behind me. I can't stop crying when I think about it," she said.
Her adviser and the adviser for the couple who lost $221,000 have left the firm and are not able to be contacted.
Warning bells were sounded last year for another Whangarei investor, also a widow, who had a $16,000 investment in Bridgecorp.
"My son who was involved in the finance industry said midway through last year to get out because Bridgecorp was going to tip over. I said, 'Okay', but when I rang my adviser in Whangarei she said, 'Oh no, that's not right. We have utmost faith in them'. I repeated what my son had said and she got on her high horse a bit and said that people in the finance industry were often quite sceptical about what other companies were doing."
She was shocked to also find another $26,000 investment at risk as a result of the collapse of another finance company, Property Finance - an investment made on the advice of the same financial consultant.
Whangarei investment adviser Lucas Remmerswaal attended a meeting of Bridgecorp investors in Auckland last month organised by Suzanne Edmonds of the Exposing Unacceptable Financial Advice group, and organised the meeting for Northland investors in the Whangarei Library yesterday.
Mr Remmerswaal is taking a particular interest in the issue because he was asked by Tower Financial Advisory Services to look after an established base of 450 clients, 30 of whom had money invested in Bridgecorp.
"I didn't give the investment advice but I'm not sidestepping the issue. I've done what I can to help investors wanting information but I think from now on the matter has to be handled through the courts."
Mr Remmerswaal said he hoped one of the outcomes would be to stop the spread of "bad or dishonest practices by some investment advisers in some areas".
- NORTHERN ADVOCATE (WHANGAREI)
