In a statement on Wednesday, the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) said nearly 6,000 financial advisers are yet to be registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) following the passage of legislation in November 2023.
According to the FAAA, these advisers are at risk of no longer being able to provide advice.
In line with the new legislation, advisers who are not registered by the deadline of 1 February 2024 will not be able to legally provide financial advice.
A central registration requirement for financial advisers was originally introduced in the Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response – Better Advice) Act 2021 and was due to come into force from 1 January 2023, however, it has since been delayed several times.
The FAAA reminded that all advisers who were registered with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) as at 1 January 2022, and have not changed licensee since, are deemed to be registered. For all other advisers, their licensee needs to register them.
“While there have been a number of communications about this new obligation, we are aware that many licensee staff and advisers have been on leave recently and thus not yet attended to this matter,” said the chief executive officer of the FAAA, Sarah Abood.
“Completing this process by 1 February 2024 is essential in order for advisers to continue to practice. A lot is at stake,” Ms Abood cautioned.
She advised impacted advisers to check to see whether they are already registered by looking up their adviser record on the Financial Advisers Register (FAR).
Namely, the FAAA explained that there is a new field in the first section on “Registration status”.
“If this is showing as ‘Registered’, then there is nothing further required. However, if it is showing as ‘Not Registered’, then it is essential that they immediately contact their licensee to confirm the process to complete registration,” said Ms Abood.
One new part of this registration process is the requirement for advisers to provide a declaration that they are a fit and proper person.
ASIC has issued Information Sheet 276 FAQs: Registration for relevant providers, which provides more background information on this obligation.
Can someone please explain what the benefit of this new adviser register is?
Surely ASIC has more productive and constructive matters to attend to.
ASIC Website
“administer the law effectively and with minimal procedural requirements”
Hope that helps – I’m still scratching my head. Perhaps with minimal procedural requirements means reducing the work load of ASIC?
Here’s a perfect example of how ASIC earned its reputation as ‘asleep at the wheel’ and ‘paper-pushers extraordinaire’. They should be out from behind their taxpayer-funded corporate belly-fattening desks and chairs and pounding the beat catching scam artists et al. Instead, they are sitting playing double-up on unjustifiable and extortionate fees for struggling advisers who have already registered through the ASIC FAR system. Just classic public service BS writ LARGE. Sitting there on their taxpayer fattened ar**s dreaming up easy ways to steal yet more money from honest client-serving advisers rather than the large super funds or other large corporates whom they know can fight back against such fees.
ASIC should be disbanded today and replaced FRESH from the ground up with people who can be trusted to have the best interests of clients and their chosen advisers. Anything less is a continuing insult to taxpayers who finance the current sad farce named ASIC.
Also appears a clean out of the Department making these law requiring this additional registration – more and more red tape requiring more and more public servants?
FAR – Financial Advice Register.
Except if you’re ASIC, where apparently you can be on the Register, but not Registered.
You couldn’t make this up.
Jones wanting to cut red tape to reduce the cost to serve. Yeah sure. Just total nonsense from the government & regulator assisted by the FAAA. The days of political niceties & diplomacy are over.
You don’t have to pay the ASIC levy and CSLR levy [b]year after year[/b]!
A big saving and [b]no more insults[/b]!
So AFSL’s already registered all Advisers via ASIC’s FAR.
Now ASIC want the same AFSL’s to Re-Register and re-pay a Fee to Register again under an additional part of ASIC’s FAR.
WHAT IS THE FREAKING POINT ASIC ?
Useless, Time wasting, Red Tape maniac’s at ASIC.
Just ASIC being ASIC
Deliberately keeping it low key, to trip us up
Waste our time with more red tape
Steal another $50 out of our pockets
Plus more in late fees for those who didn’t happen to read this article
Plus more in penalties for those who inadvertently give advice, not realising they are no longer registered
Glorious.
A functioning ASIC website would probably make this list of outstanding advisers a lot shorter…it has been a very frustrating experience.