According to Sophie Gerber, director at Sophie Grace Compliance and Legal, the government is due to reconvene by the end of this month, and licensees will be waiting to see if the new funding model for ASIC is moved forward.
While details of the model are yet to be announced, the government has indicated it will require “those that demand the highest level of regulation by ASIC to pay more to the regulator”, Ms Gerber said.
Licensees would be expected to pay a base levy of $250 for the licence itself, as well as additional levies for some authorisations, such as financial advice.
Those who are only authorised to provide advice on Tier 2 financial products would be expected to pay a flat levy of $750.
Those authorised to provide advice on Tier 1 products would be charged a base levy of $1,350 plus an additional amount of $470 for each financial adviser who is registered on the Financial Advice Register.
Ms Gerber also noted there will be a consultation period for the ASIC user-pays model.
“The government will consult on the introduction of an industry funding model in line with the best practice requirements,” she said.
“No final decision will be made until the final consultation period and the ASIC capability review have concluded.”
Ben & Paul, I largely agree with you. The hard part is that not all AFSL’s are as honest as we would hope as seen when a dud adviser is allowed to move to a different licence when caught out…nobody seems to tell ASIC! so we ourselves are letting the side down and not getting the real info to ASIC. As they dont seem to have a handle on practical policing of our industry they waste money and resources on the little stuff and leave the big stuff alone or bungle it. We, at every level, need to take the initiative and dob in (very un-Australian I know) each dud adviser and force AFSL’s to reject them when they are shown to be duds. An AFSL does not need to be a court and so rules of evidence is not there – do the reference checks and say no, likewise, when a dud is found out, be honest and tell the future AFSL of the wiseness of their decision…. oh and tell ASIC. THEN we might see a cleaner industry and ASIC wont need all the money that this rather greedy way of funding is expected to provide. Of course, if the Fed Gov clamped down on Centrelink, they could afford ASIC easily and keep our costs down….dont get me started there!
I agree Paul. The irony here, is that our regulator is the biggest problem with our profession. In fact I would say ASIC has a toxic, anti-advice culture. They deliberately undermine the value of advice at every possible opportunity. They make it excruciatingly difficult for good, honest advisers to look after their clients. They push blame on us for other’s wrong doing. They fail to protect our clients from product failures. When bad apples are brought to their attention, they move at snail’s pace, if at all. And now they want us to give them money? For what? One can only hope they use this money to make the current crop of duds redundant and start again with a clean slate; employing people with industry experience, compassion for our clients and a passion for this great profession.
I know I speak for no-one but myself BUT, really! A regulatory levy for advisers that ASIC doesn’t supervise is a very cynical exercise indeed. The AFSL still supervises adviser training, imposes standards, enforces compliance with legislation and absorbs the ultimate financial risk of bad practice, and yet, ASIC expects the AFSL to report breaches of all kinds back to them (not having lifted a finger) so they can decide if the ‘big stick’ needs to come out. Give us a break. No doubt, us advisers will simply pay for this and will pass it on in full, with GST and an administrative margin, to our clients for the trouble of it.