According to Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals (AIOFP) executive director Peter Johnston, members of the AIOFP have few complaints about the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) beyond the levy.
“Besides for the ASIC levy issue, we are having difficulty getting any other complaints about ASIC performance from members! Even after some well-placed phone calls yesterday specifically asking the question, not one could identify any other issue, amazing stuff and well-done ASIC,” Mr Johnston said.
The reason, Mr Johnston said, is that advisers have turned their ire towards politicians, rather than the corporate watchdog.
“It seems advisers are content with ASIC’s performance as the ‘police’ of the industry, which is a good thing, but it also indicates advisers are now acutely aware that it is the politicians that have concocted the savage legislative environment over the past 10 years and its only them who can change it,” he said.
Once again pointing to the AIOFP’s recent survey that found 87 per cent positive response to whether a person will change their vote if any financial services legislation is detrimentally affecting their financial position, Mr Johnston said “all politicians are now realising the power the advice community has with their client base”.
“You may recall the Grim Reaper Memorial Stone at the St John’s Co–Cathedral in Malta and its inscription reading – ‘You who tread on me will soon be trodden on’ … this is the message we want to convey to Canberra, we want this mess fixed sooner rather than later or we get politically active in marginal seats leading into the 2024–25 federal election (like we did in the seat of Kooyong),” he said.
In July, following the announcement of the increased ASIC levy, Mr Johnston said the AIOFP would increase its lobbying on the issue.
“We have decided to commence some lobbying on this levy issue due to the pain and anger this is causing many members, we have not seen this much frustration since the grandfathering revenue ban was announced,” Mr Johnston said at the time.
“You may recall we suggested commencing this strategy leading into the final 12 months of this term of government and not put another issue on the minister’s plate, but we will do both considering the circumstances.”
While ASIC reduced the levy by $400 per adviser earlier in November, it did little to improve the sentiment among the advice industry, including among the AIOFP.
“We are obviously pleased the levy has been reduced but it looks like it was only due to an accounting miscalculation,” Mr Johnston said.
“The AIOFP would prefer it being eliminated due to the bizarre notion of the advice community directly funding its own police force to investigate and prosecute itself.
“Considering the government is quick to snaffle any penalties paid by misbehaving institutions into general revenue, we think it is only fair that, at the very least, an independent party decides on the quantum to be paid, ASIC is far too conflicted to make this call.”
Satisfied when they get banned for having happy clients; never having had a complaint; but banned anyway because two ASIC employees don’t understand the material they’re judging Advisers on (product, strategy and tax) and that they have a disagreement as to how much insurance should be recommended to a client (you know, given all their years of experience with clients on a practical level).
Rubbish, Advisers are not happy with ASIC, a short list of problems include:
1) ASIC continually too late to disasters regardless of years of warnings, Storm, FFNS, Dixons, etc
2) ASIC blame Advisers for MIS failures, eg. Dixons US RealEstate Fund debacle is being blamed on Advisers and ASIC even advertised for Dixons clients to make AFCA complaints so Advisers have to pay for it via CSLR.
3) ASIC paid for comment Academics to make FARSEA submissions that made the Education and Code of Ethics totally unworkable.
4) ASIC’s own overly paternalistic and pedantic interpretations of laws, such as SoA’s have wreaked havoc on Advisers. Hundreds of Reg Guides totalling thousands of pages of Mass BS Over Regulation. ASIC’s own attempt at so called Short, Concise SoA’s was shown to fail so many of ASIC’s & AFCA’s own interpretations and thus ASIC has not returned to this since 2017.
5) ASIC only considers a client Review has occured if an RoA or SoA is completed. There is so much Adviser review work that does not require stupid SoA or RoA’s but then ASIC say no Review occured.
ASIC even want annual SoA’s and RoA’s to be completed to say DO NOTHING !!!!!!!
6) ASIC Kill Advisers for anything mentality is contrasted with let Industry Super Funds do whatever they want. ASIC are Regulatory Capture Corrupted with Industry Super.
7) [b]Laws made by ministers and regulators (like ASIC), rather than those passed by the elected parliament, have accounted for almost 97 per cent of new regulatory restrictions since 2005. For every one regulatory restriction introduced in primary legislation at the federal level between 2005 and 2022, 28 regulatory restrictions were created in delegated legislation.[/b]
[b][url=https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/research-papers/the-growth-of-red-tape-causes-and-solutions]https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/research-papers/the-growth-of-red-tape-causes-and-solutions[/url][/b]
Bureaucrats like ASIC, AFCA & FARSEA believing there job now is to [b]make the rules, interpret the rules and enforce the rules = [/b]Bureaucrats totally out of control.
[size=5][b]It’s no wonder there is next to zero productivity growth in the country. [/b][/size]
[size=5][b]We are all drowning in Red Tape. [/b][/size]