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 (ASIC 25-184MR). 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.

ASIC’s Federal Court proceedings against Mr Merhi are continuing. In mid-July 2026 the Federal Court lifted the travel restraint orders that had been in place since February 2025, on Mr Merhi’s own application and over ASIC’s opposition, as reported by Professional Planner, Financial Standard and IFA. ASIC declined to comment beyond confirming that it opposed the application, and the Court’s reasons are not published. ASIC’s own media release on the freezing and travel restraint orders has not been updated to record the lifting, and at its last revision it still recorded the restraint as running until November 2026, so the public register is behind the reporting. Lifting a travel restraint is an order about a person’s movements: it determines nothing in the substantive proceedings, which remain on foot, and no findings have been made against Mr Merhi.

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 equivalent to the change in the Australian consumer price index from 5 September 2025 to the date of payment, 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. These are AFCA’s own findings, in AFCA’s own words, from two of those determinations:

This is not my characterisation. It is AFCA’s, in the determinations themselves.

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).

AFCA cannot consider a complaint about the fund's decision to make an investment available, how much your investment made or lost, or how the fund was managed as a whole.

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 person per AFCA determination where the firm is insolvent and the determination relates to personal financial advice (and certain other regulated activities). You cannot be paid twice for the same losses. CSLR does not cover managed investment schemes.

AFCA can award up to $631,500 per claim for direct financial loss in a complaint lodged on or after 1 January 2024. There is no monetary cap on what AFCA can award in a superannuation complaint. The $150,000 CSLR cap applies only where the firm has shut down and cannot pay.

Both funds are in liquidation and are unlikely to have money to pay. Complaints against investment funds are not covered by the CSLR. AFCA may not be able to accept such a complaint. Claims against a fund in liquidation go through the liquidator's proof-of-debt process, which is a different process.

If you invested in Shield or First Guardian through a super platform, there is nothing you need to do in the liquidation process. The trustee of the super platform will make a claim to the liquidator for you. (Take Your Super Back, Dealing with the liquidators (Super Consumers Australia), page last updated 13 April 2026)

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 per person per AFCA determination. You cannot be paid twice for the same losses.
• 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: Both funds are in liquidation and are unlikely to have money to pay. Complaints against investment funds are not covered by the CSLR. AFCA may not be able to accept such a complaint. Claims against a fund in liquidation go through the liquidator's proof-of-debt process, which is a different process.

That residual is the lost growth (what your money would have earned in a properly chosen fund), plus interest from the date of loss. AFCA can also order the return of the fees you paid for the advice, and of other amounts you spent as a result of the advice or the loss. AFCA cannot award compensation for non-financial loss, the impact on your life, in a complaint about a super fund. In a complaint about an adviser it can, where the impact went beyond the ordinary, up to $6,300.

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. 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.

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 own published returns are the comparator. 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. InterPrac is the one advice firm not in liquidation, but it is contesting AFCA in the Federal Court and has delayed paying determinations.

1. You will fill out the form. From your phone if that is easier.
2. You will receive a real, lodgeable PDF, plus an email walking you through AFCA’s portal step by step. The blocks of text you will need to paste into AFCA’s online form will sit in light grey boxes inside that email, with a one-click copy button beside each one.
3. You will read the document. You will change anything you want. If something is wrong, you will email me and I will reply personally.
4. When you are ready, you will lodge the complaint yourself at afca.org.au. AFCA’s portal is free; you do not need to pay anyone, including me, to use it.
5. AFCA will write back with a case number. Keep it somewhere safe. It will be how you follow your own complaint from here.
6. If the firm makes a settlement offer, that will be handled through AFCA after lodgement, not through me.
7. Reply to me by email any time, throughout. graham@noaussieleftbehind.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 it can keep accepting complaints against them. Membership is what gives AFCA jurisdiction; without it, there is nowhere to send a complaint.

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, and it has not moved.