The Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals’ (AIOFP) executive director Peter Johnston has penned an open letter to opposition leader Peter Dutton following news that the party are undergoing an internal review to assess where it can improve.
In the open letter, Mr Johnston provided “some direct and candid feedback” where he outlined a number of areas where the Liberal party went “so terribly wrong” with advice-related policies.
Mr Johnston pointed at a number of “draconian” legislation such as FASEA and the life insurance framework (LIF) that he argued were brought in to “frustrate and intimidate” Australian advisers.
“The FASEA Exam concept is a bizarrely structured strategy to remove Advisers from the industry,” the open letter reads.
“Where else in the education global universe do students have to fail twice [not once] before they can sit for a final exam attempt to stay in the industry? Over 1,000 predominately over 50s advisers are facing elimination from the industry on October 1st if they do not pass a Masters level three-hour exam on ethics where the questions have been designed to be ambiguous at best to fail them.
“There are hundreds of age 60-plus advisers who have physical complications with eyesight or IT skills who are stressed out because they have not sat for an exam for literally decades – but they are very good at their craft.”
The open letter comes after Mr Johnston challenged the Albanese government to act quickly on making an impact in the advice sector, calling for “minimum 50 per cent” of regulation imposed on the industry in recent years to be wiped out.
“It could be done in a day,” he said during a recent appearance on the ifa Show podcast.
“It doesn’t have to go on for months and months and months with bureaucrats. It should be people from the industry – people from AFCA representing consumers and people from ASIC. They could sit in a room in an afternoon and point out all the stuff which is just ridiculously useless and just get rid of it.”
On the same episode, Mr Johnston argued that there is “no doubt” the 13 associations that are currently active in the industry is too many.
“There’s 13 associations, it is ridiculous. Now, if you compare that to the mortgage brokering industry, there’s two. They both got on and they got it fixed,” he said.
“Canberra sits back and says, ‘[the advice industry] are just a rabble.’
“So it’s got to be rationalised. We go back about four years ago, there was 30,000 member advisers back then. Now there’s 17,000, there’s still 13 associations. Something’s got to give.”
Listen to the full podcast with Mr Johnston here.
Just imagine where we could be if the other associations were as active as AIOFP. Thanks Peter and your team for actually doing the right thing by the advisers that you represent
Understand that the now minister and former minister attended briefings together and had bipartisan agreement on these matters from the start. In my view the AIOFP is trying to create a controversy when one does not exist.
Do not know about voting for Labor but Peter is on the money with his other comments. What do you expect from Jane Hume being an ex industry fund employee. Go figure.
Where would we be without the AIOFP…
Peter Johnson is doing what he is paid to do. Fight for advisers. All other bodies ceo should be made to stand down. Feathering their own nests. Congrats to Peter. Fight , fight , fight. Get the rest of the advisers to make it through Pete.
In fairness to AFA, they have also recently come out swinging against the lies and prejudice of CHOICE and union super.
Peter went hard on convincing his members to vote for labor. Come December 2022 when Labor takes direction from Choice and the ISN, and advice is destroyed by carve-outs to Super funds, many AIOFP members maybe writing a similar letter to Peter. Hope that doesn’t happen.
No change is Government policy then?
It wonta be easy, under the Albanese!
Be extremely hard to be any worse than under Frydenburg and his puppets O’Dwyer & Hume.
I for one are very please to have voted against and help get rid of the disastrous LNP.
Will there still be members of AIOFP…don’t most of them still need to pass a ‘FASEA’ exam?
I guess we’ll see. I voted Labor for the first time in my life because the Liberals not only turned their backs on financial advisers, but actively sought to undermine them. So hoping for the Liberals to have a sudden change of heart was simply not an option at the last election. I’ll take my chances with Albanese/Labor this time around and hope for some common sense policy.
Well, you’ve got to hand it to Peter Johnston – he has vision and is prepared to stand up for advisers- I think I will become a member of AIOFP and give up AFA 🙂
I am over 60 and have a number of collegues over 50 that passed the exam on first sitting. Simply accepting I had to learn what was needed to answer the questions. It is not Master level haveing sat exams to get my CPA and SMSF specialisation it is no different. I feel for those that are haveing difficulty, I understand we have a problem in cost of advice and Risk only experts. My view is its time to move on and say We can give advic this way which protects consumers and is cost effective. Licensees and Vertical intergaration do not add to this at all in my humble view.