After moving to Sri Lanka in 2019, Prad Navaratnam – founder and managing director of paraplanning service Advice Lab – discussed some of the areas of concern he had in regard to the government working with the financial services sector during a recent appearance on the ifa Show podcast.
“I find Australian government regulation… they dip their toes in way too much,” Mr Navaratnam said.
“There’s so much red tape just to get anything off the ground there. By the time you get through all the regulation, pay all the commissions, pay all the fees, pay all the insurances, you haven’t even opened your doors yet and you’re a good two years behind.
“I understand they’re trying to protect consumers at the end of the day, but if you’re trying to encourage people to get into business and you want people to get out there and create more businesses and help generate more profits – which will in turn pay more taxes which is great for the country – you need to let them do that. You can’t police them as much as Australia [does].”
Mr Navaratnam said in comparison, the Sri Lankan government wants entrepreneurs to start businesses.
“They’ll give you whatever support that they can to get you off the ground to help you get up and going,” he said.
“That’s the sort of mindset [Australia] needs. Not a mindset of, ‘No, sorry. You can’t start until you’ve got these documents in place.’”
Listen to the full podcast here.
Mr Navartanam’s comments come as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced on Monday that the cost of levies charged by ASIC will be reduced.
The current relief will see ASIC levies charged per licensee remain at $1,500 – a substantial reduction relative to the level estimated in ASIC’s 2020-21 Cost Recovery Implementation Statement of $3,138 per adviser.
This would ultimately see ASIC levies charged for personal advice to retail clients restored to their 2018-19 level of $1,142 per adviser for the next two years (relating to 2020-21 and 2021-22).
Australia is the land of the red tape. Full of public servants all trying to justify their existence, keep government funding and keep their jobs. Can anyone comment on how much red tape costs the australian economy? The IPA estimate its $176 billion per year.
Here we have the Financial Planning industry swamped with more red tape than any other industry, and for what? was it 1.3% of AFCA claims? Consumers are priced out of advice, advisers business costs (from red-tape) are overly inflated, yet the moral hazard is people are pushed into unlicensed advice via social media platforms. Australians lost $62 million in investment scams in 2019, so I wonder how much people have lost in 2021 when there are less advisers and less people paying for advice.
Too true
A highly accurate overview of the current federal liberal government. They are no friend of small business.
There is this anti Liberal sentiment coming into discussion which is driven by sales staff working in the boiler rooms of Industry Super funds.
Rubbish, there are many Advisers that have become Ex-Liberal voters due to moronic mass over regulation of Advisers under Frydenberg, Hume, ODwyer & LNP in general.
I am one of these Advisers and as a life long blue blood Liberal I will NOT be voting for them at upcoming election.
Many of my pre retiree clients be it Drs, nurses, builders, engineers, etc it’s across the board are being Regulated into retirement as it is too costly, with far too many BS Regs to semi retire.
Advisers are the ultimate proof of the madness of Australian Govt over regulation but it is also getting worse in every industry.
Back off Govt
Cut Red Tape BS for a change
Labor has pushed the anti-adviser agenda and assisted the current overblown levy and inaccessibility to any advice bar their own intrafund advice since the start. Are you a moron or ISA/Labor/Union employee?