According to the proposals paper, the industry funding model will recover the actual costs that ASIC spent during the financial year to regulate each sub-sector.
Personal advice providers on Tier 1 products will be levied the most, at $22 million to recover ASIC’s costs or $960 per adviser on the financial advisers register.
Personal advice providers on Tier 2 products will be levied $900,000. General advice providers to retail and wholesale clients will be charged $800,000 and wholesale advice providers to wholesale clients will be charged $200,000.
These levies are different from those in an August 2015 consultation paper, which proposed a levy on financial advice providers on Tier 1 products that involved a fixed component of $1,350 and a variable component of $470 per adviser.
“Submissions strongly opposed this model due to concerns it would place a larger burden on smaller licensees relative to larger licensees due to the fixed component. This concern has been addressed by moving to a fully variable levy,” the new report said.
However, the paper said ASIC does not propose to charge a separate levy on robo-advice providers “at this time”.
The new funding model is part of a package of reforms the government announced in April in an effort to bolster the role of ASIC.
“The proposed industry funding model will include measures to support ASIC becoming a stronger regulator through increased accountability, transparency and engagement with consumers and its regulated entities,” the paper said.
Submissions on the proposals paper will be open until Friday, 16 December, with a view to implement the funding model in the second half of 2017.
If, and it is a BIG if, ASIC was competent and capable, they would not need to gouge small business to fund themselves.
Once again, under the guise of consumer protection the soft target IFA has another nail placed into its coffin.