Set to start from 5 October, the corporate regulator said the DDOs “aim to assist consumers to obtain appropriate products by requiring firms to design financial products to meet the needs of consumers, and to distribute their products in a more targeted manner”.
In an information sheet released on Friday, ASIC confirmed that licensees and advisers have obligations to reporting and record keeping, a point contested by the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) this week.
“ASIC may request records from advice licensees and financial advisers to monitor compliance with the law,” ASIC said on Friday.
“Good record keeping is likely to assist in demonstrating that advice licensees and financial advisers have taken the necessary steps to comply with the obligations.”
On Thursday, despite praising the removal of the requirement for financial advisers to report “nil complaints” to product issuers, the FPA called on ASIC to remove formal reporting periods, calling it “unnecessary and unworkable”.
“There is an opportunity for ASIC to create an alignment between dispute resolution and TMD reporting to remove further layers of unnecessary regulatory burden, duplication and costs on our members and the profession,” FPA’s head of policy, strategy and innovation, Ben Marshan, said.
Read more about the information sheet here.
Minister Hume has recently said that she doesn’t want to take on unlicenced financial influencers as she doesn’t want to create a nanny state. So whats this DDO all about?
What happens when we allow the Dept of Treasury to employ over 1000 staff, costing taxpayers $152 million pa. 500 of them have absolutely nothing to do, so they sit around dreaming up new regulatory red tape, in order to kill off your business.
The whole thing is clearly nonsense and wasting client funds. It’s well intentioned nonsense but developed by some bureaucrat in a silo with no appreciation of the mountain of existing obligation which already covers all this and far better. The consumer of any product decides what is useful to them, the product designer trusts that he or she is skillful enough that suitable volumes will buy the product.
Can anyone please explain how this DDO madness helps clients of Advisers ?????
Given Adviser already must:
– “know your client” & “know your product”
– Apply Best Interest Duty to Advice given to clients.
– Ethically Advise clients to be better off from Advice.
What if anything besides more ticking boxes is this DDO rubbish doing for Advised clients ASIC ????????
Frydenberg, please explain what is the benefit ????????????????
Frydenberg can’t explain the benefits because he is totally and utterly out of his depth. Her has no idea and no control of ASIC.
Combined with the fact that it doesn’t do anything for clients of advisers.
Is there anyone that expects this to roll out smoothly?