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Ilse, 40, asks her adviser, Ravi, to recommend a balanced fund she read about online, and says she wants advice on nothing else. Under the best interests duty, Ravi … (i) satisfies the duty if he recommends the fund she named, because she has limited the scope. (ii) may limit the advice to that subject, but must still act in Ilse's best interests within it.
Statement (i) is false: a client's request does not relieve Ravi of the steps in s961B(2) of the Corporations Act 2001 (compilation 19 Sep 2026) or of the rule that the advice be appropriate (s961G). A reasonable investigation must include the fund Ilse named (s961D(2)), but it need not end there. Statement (ii) is true: the note to s961B(2) anticipates scaled advice on a narrow subject matter, and ASIC's RG 244 confirms that the duty still applies to the agreed subject.
A client's product preference is information to consider, not a safe harbour.
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