On Monday, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced “temporary and targeted relief” for financial advisers by cutting the cost of recovery levies back to $1,142 per adviser for the next two years, which was originally to be increased to $3,138 per adviser per year.
The Advisers Association (TAA), which represents Australia’s largest institutional adviser group, welcomed the news. However, CEO Neil Macdonald said the government must work with stakeholders in the advice industry to develop sustainable solutions.
“It is vital to find a way for all vested interests in our community to genuinely collaborate so that we move forward,” Mr Macdonald said.
“We need to collectively agree on, and collectively design, a new model for financial advice; a model that has the client at its core, that is sustainable, enables the efficient and cost-effective delivery of financial advice to everyday Australians, and provides consumers with the right level of protections.
“Genuine collaboration requires not just a willingness on the part of the people within the profession and the industry to work together, but also policies, processes and technology.”
The levy relief announcement was widely praised by bodies and advisers within the industry including the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) which said it “will provide some certainty and stability to financial planners”.
“This is a significant milestone for the FPA and our members, as we have been calling for a review of the flawed model since it was first proposed and then introduced three years ago. We would like to thank the government for listening to our concerns and those of our members,” FPA chief executive Dante De Gori CFP said.
Meanwhile, the national president of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA), Michael Nowak, said the relief was well timed.
“This is a much-needed move in the right direction, and I want to thank the Treasurer, the Hon. Josh Frydenberg, MP, and the Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy, the Hon. Jane Hume, and the government for finally listening to the AFA and the advice sector,” Mr Nowak said.
Local adviser and chief executive of Change Accountants and Advisers, Timothy Munro, also welcomed the announcement, noting that “we’re starting to see some common sense with the way financial advisers are treated”.
“This announcement will reduce the ASIC levy by approximately $2,000 per adviser, which is brilliant,” Mr Munro said.
“Any extra costs put onto advisers need to be charged to clients at the end of the day, so it’s a win for clients as well as for advisers.”
When the ASIC fees are dropped back to $600, I will celebrate. Until then, advisers are still be skinned alive. Oh well, the upside is this clown outfit will be gone by May 2022, and Labor will be in office.
This adviser levy is a sham anyway. If the government sees a need for a watchdog/reporting agency, it’s incumbent on it (the government) to pay for such a body. Until that is acknowledged and implemented, advisers will never have a sense of peace in this sector.
Embarrassing how so many groups are fawning over the government. The Liberals introduced a great big new tax and then let a bloated bureaucracy increase the tax as much as they wanted.
They shouldn’t be congratulated for a “temporary” reprieve.
Who the hell are all these people? The TAA, the FPA, the AFA, the AIOFP, Finsia, the Stockbrokers and Financial Advisers Associations…that’s a lot of bodies that apparently do nothing more than run conferences on a tropical island… Why don’t the bodies that represent large insto’s like the FPA merge with the TAA?
These bodies do not represent advisers, obviously. They represent the institutions who manafacture the products