The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) has welcomed incoming financial services minister Stephen Jones who was sworn in this week.
In a new statement, the AFA said Mr Jones has developed a “sound understanding” of the challenges facing the sector and acknowledged his willingness to address these challenges.
CEO Phil Anderson said the association will be looking to address other “regulatory issues” with the minister.
“The AFA looks forward to working with Minister Jones to achieve policy settings that enable better outcomes for consumers and to enable Financial Advisers to thrive,” Mr Anderson said.
“The Quality of Advice Review presents a significant opportunity to achieve a quantum leap in the state of the market. There are other important financial advice regulatory issues that we will seek to address with the Minister and his team.”
Mr Jones has maintained in recent months that he will look to make some changes in the industry, particularly when it comes to compliance and education standards.
Speaking on a recent webinar hosted by Stockbrokers and Investment Advisers Association (SIAA), Mr Jones doubled down on his earlier commitment to fix the “hot mess” that is the advice industry by introducing an ‘experience pathway’.
“We want to put in place a sensible, efficient recognition of prior learning arrangement so that if you’ve been doing the job for 10 years, you can continue to be a licensed adviser provided you haven’t got any black marks,” Mr Jones said.
He assured that if appointed, Labor “should be able to” enact the experience pathway “pretty quickly”.
Earlier this year, joining Momentum Media on an exclusive podcast, Mr Jones criticised the government for “monumentally mishandling” regulatory changes across the financial services industry and vowed to do better if Labor is elected to government.
He gave a candid assessment of the financial services industry, labelling the poorly managed “tsunami of regulatory changes” as the main culprit for adviser exodus in Australia.
“There was a whole bunch of changes that were in play, there was a known timeline for it, not going back months or even years. Some of this stuff has been five, six years in the making, how a government could monumentally mishandle a bunch of this stuff is beyond belief, particularly a government that says it’s a good economic manager.”
I’m in the same position, it’s compliance overkill and very time consuming as it’s not just generating the forms and having them sent out / meeting with clients to discuss, but also file noting and sending off to each provider. I have no issues advising clients how much they are paying in fees each year, but requiring them to sign a form yearly has already pushed up the cost of the advice I provide noticeably.
FEE CONSENT: The issue remains that Corps Act 962A (3) is being wilfully ignored by super fund Trustees, particularly when a fixed term fee (say 36 months at $20 a month) in law is NOT an ongoing fee. Until this is rectified over 1 million working families will not be able to access cost affordable retail advice, but wholesale investors suffer no such impact. That is the epitome of no integrity in law. But in the meantime it’s OK for investment managers & administrators to harvest billions in ongoing fees from super funds funds without annual renewal consents. This ridiculous red tape inequity will collapse very soon, one way or another.
The AFA will have to take a number behind his union fund masters. His priority is going to be more carve outs for super funds, financial planners and clients will be far down the list of people he is going to assist.
Fee Consent needs to be scrapped or have one standardised form accepted by all providers. I work in a one adviser practice and we currently have a part timer spending the majority of their time sending out and chasing up Fee Consent forms. Unfortunately, this cost needs to be passed on to the clients.
Quite ridiculous the need for annual consent when all is needed is opt out