About Time!...what action is being taken on the Directors and RMs?...still engaged in running AFSL's???...what a joke this industry is!..Directors helping themselves to investors funds and remain in charge of a financial advice licence...There better be a strong message still to come..

Is it ethical to paraphrase Peter Drucker in the first line without acknowledgement? "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" OR Is it ethical to claim two factors that the literature indicates without citing the literature?

at least someone has the guts to say it openly, where are the life companies CEOs, other heads of the organisations, other experts from the industry coming and making statements what is good for the clients and what is not??
compare this with the mortgage broking industry where there are strong lobby groups, both the government and oppositions have changed their original positions and now do support comissions there...

Hayne has a cynical attitude to financial advice that tainted his recommendations. Sadly the voice of clients that have benefited from long term valued relationships with their advisers were not hear and not considered by Hayne. The battle the industry now faces is to deal with even more onerous legislation because we have not had a voice. The banks actions were indefensible yet somehow they became the voice for the whole industry despite the fact they only entered financial planning in early 2000s. The future of the industry revolves around the valued service financial planners provide and the exit of the banks creates the opportunity for a new voice to be heard that is louder than the cynical voice of Hayne.

WTF, is CPD this year really 60 hours, I've only done 20 i better hop on to it pronto i dont' want to be banned

AS usual Don Trapnell is spot-on. Hayne is an academic pin-head (sorry, no attempt at humour - that IS an accurate description) with ZERO experience in the real world with real people with real world insurance needs. No experience at the coalface whatsoever. It is beyond laughable - no, very sad - that he has been put in the position of chairing the RC as he is wholly unqualified to rule or make recommendations in this area. This man Hayne is undeniably conflicted with bias against life advisers, life commissions and, incredibly, life insurance itself. Coming from one of the elite in his rarefied wealthy universe it is somewhat understandable. Honestly, my plumber, who is a client, is MUCH more experienced in the area of insurance needs than Hayne and people would do MUCH better listening to my plumbers wisdom on the subject. Seriously. It is my earnest hope and that of many other advisers, that common sense and logic prevails and commissions stay. There is ZERO conflict of interest with commissions now with all companies paying the same - WHAT IS the issue this biased creature Hayne has with commissions??! Please, anyone else out there with an articulate voice to the media, NOW is the time to echo Don's comments LOUDLY to the listening world. Our time windows to affect opinions appropriately is small. Life companies . . . are you awake YET?! (Zurich & MLC excepted - good on 'em)

Good point Curious. Albeit they still have BT platforms under their client tabs. Yes, that is correct and not spellcheck. Under the client tab of their website they not have the BT logo but unashamedly describe BT wrap and BT panorama. When is ASIC going to put a stop to this scam?

This is driven by industry funds. They want to abolish risk commissions to destroy the advised market and the direct markets. This will then make industry fund group insurance the primary place to get insurance (although quite inferior at that). Naturally labor will want to support the views of industry funds and hence abolish life commissions. This was not the case for mortgage brokers as the Industry Fund owned ME Bank relies on mortgage brokers and hence has argued against banning commissions on mortgage brokers. This is why Labor backflipped on mortgage broker commissions and why their approach on life commissions is completely hypocritical. If they agree mortgage brokers should have commissions then why shoudln't life insurance brokers ? Political self interest here. Under LIF, life insurance sales were already down 20% in just the first year of its 3 year roll out !

"If unbiased, independent advice is valued by the client, then the days of bank-owned wealth businesses are numbered."

The answer to this is evidently no. It doesn't take a lot of digging to see how many independents exist that provide advice v's institutionally aligned practices. The public has had the choice already - and voted with their feet.
What critics of vertical integration fail to comprehend is the level of comfort that exists in the population by knowing that the advice provided is backed by a very large company that wont go under overnight if the advice goes pear shaped.

As a practice aligned with one of the big 4 we have directly asked our clients their thoughts on this issue. They prefer the fact that we have the backing of a major, understand that we are not independent and wouldn't pay more for advice if we were independent.

There's a lot of people dreaming of an independent utopia in advice but the broad public isn't willing to pay the cost that advice rises to.Sure the wealthy may choose to - but not everyone can afford that.

What qualifications do financial counselors need to have v advisors? If voted in labor will increase funding for an additional 500 financial counselors. This will be funded by a bank levy. Nothing has been said about this.

MyNorth Index funds are iPac branded State Street custodian index funds. They were charging 0.65%.

SPDR's ASX 200 - 0.19% World Ex Australia 0.3% Bond fund is 0.24%
So you are paying between 300 - 100% for the priviledge of a MyNorth a/c

I don't think there is an argument of merit against commissions. I guess people should be careful for what they wish for as they may well get this. As an adviser who has had a multiutude of claims including from family members for life insurance, all have been successful not ending up in the courts. No one has lost their house because of a flawed claim and lawyers didn't pocket money for litigation either. Unethical practices can be stamped out by regulators, but the regulators and government ministers, driven by ignorance of what we do for clients, either choose to ignore or use our industry to drive a political ideology and ensure that consumers remain ignorant in matters of taxation and their betterment such that they will be poor despite what they say to the voter. Advice only for the wealthy is not in the best interest of anyone. But, hey the fools putting this forward do nto have to subscribe to a best interest duty either.

Unless the financial advice industry can demonstrate their customers are genuinely better of than it they hadn't seen them, then the industry will always struggle to get people to pay up front. It needs for lack of a better term "value proposition".

The RC finding that some institutions charged dead people for ongoing advice and charged for ongoing advice but didn't provide the service is actually theft. If someone knew this was actually happening then that is inexcusable and perhaps criminal.

If you sell advice as a product you must deliver the product.

I think a lot of other things(eg inappropriate advice), there is really a lot of grey area there. Sure all advice which ends in financial loss in retrospect seems inappropriate.(unless its limiting loss).

What the big shame is that there are a lot of great advisers out there, that really help a lot of people become more affluent and avoid hardship. This is just as valuable as a doctor looking after your physical and mental health, both of which can suffer immensely.

Maybe the RC doesn't deliver better financial advice, but the next initiative now will.

The conspiracy theorist in me says maybe this is a play by the insurance companies to boost their direct markets?

the next big thing I reckon that ASIC will look at is doing CPD audits.

this is probably a bannable offence, i.e. not meeting your CPD obligations therefore you are not suitably qualified and a fit and proper person to be a relevant provider.

hope everyone here has completed or on their way to completing the 60 hours of CPD for this financial year ending 30 June, including the requirements by FASEA.

this is more important than anything fpa or afa will ever say. let's get back to doing the CPD instead. we'll actually learn something.

The RC was into "misconduct" in Financial Services. It wasn't an RC into Financial Services.
Unfortunately the presentation of the results of the RC failed to acknowledge this key point and the media is too daft to understand the difference.
Furthermore the vast bulk of the issues had already been self reported and were breaches of existing laws. This doesn't indicate a failure of FS firms, it indicates a failure of the regulatory regime to understand the application of the law and to work with firms self reporting to quickly remediate the issues.

So how do this get addressed - more power and funding to an incompetent body.
What's needed is a simplification of the regulatory regime so the regulator knows what they should be doing.

@ Angry. The adviser broke existing laws. This doesn't mean more are needed this just means the existing laws need to be enforced.

Speak for yourself! It does not happen at my practice. Why other planners struggle with something so basic is beyond me.