Members of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) have voted in favour of the proposed merger of the two associations at extraordinary general meetings (EGMs) held in Sydney on Tuesday.
According to a statement issued by the groups, across all resolutions, an average of 96.5 per cent of AFA votes and 96.7 per cent of FPA votes were in favour — well above the required 75 per cent.
The groups confirmed that some 3,000 members, including 500 proxy votes, took part in the merger vote.
“A merged association gives us a united voice at a crucial turning point for our profession, including the proposed changes from the Quality of Advice review,” said Sam Perera, president of the AFA.
“Our members have recognised the importance of having a strong, single voice representing them to government, regulators and other stakeholders.
“During our discussions in recent months with members, it was clear that there was significant support for a merger, but we never took this for granted and recognised the importance of members having their say,” he said.
Also speaking on the occasion, David Sharpe, chair of the FPA, said that both the AFA and FPA boards were unanimously in support of a merger since it was first proposed to members in September 2022.
“This is a historic day. We are coming together at a critical time, when we have a real opportunity to drive much-needed change to strengthen and grow the profession of financial advice,” Mr Sharpe said.
“I want to thank all members of the AFA and FPA who have engaged with us, asked many great questions along the way and taken the time to make their voices heard. You have put your trust in us to create a larger and stronger association to represent you, and we will be doing our utmost to deliver.”
Adding that “there has been a great deal of work going on since the proposal was first put forward”, Mr Sharpe said the groups are now in a strong position to move ahead with formally establishing the merged association.
The full legal name of the new association will be the Financial Advice Association of Australia Limited.
Legal completion is expected to take place on 3 April 2023, with a transition period said to run from April to June, including adoption of the new name and constitution, finalising and launching a new brand and logo, new board formation, and membership transition.
The transition is expected to be complete by 1 July 2023.
It was a pretty dodgy process, if you couldn’t make it you either had to nominate a proxy or give your vote to the board. I did not want to do either, I wanted to vote but could not attend the AGM. It was geared to only one outcome
It was an EGM – pretty standard stuff.
Plenty of notice etc.
Let’s move on.
If you were a member of either Assoc you would have been sent an invite and given a link to go online to see the live feed of the meeting and vote online as many who could not attend did definitely not geared for an outcome
Both FPA and AFA endorsed Michelle Levy’s QAR recommendations in full, including the recommendation to allow untrained, unlicensed, call centre sales reps to give “personal advice”.
A genuine professional association would have only endorsed those elements of QAR aimed at removing the costs and complexity of professional advice which provide no benefit to consumers. A genuine professional association would never have endorsed Levy’s crazy recommendation to allow personal advice to be given by unlicensed sales reps, which will obviously be detrimental to consumers.
Hard to see the new combined association being any better, given the same people remain in charge.
What was the total number of votes?
I didn’t know voting had opened yet.
Sounds like you are fairly disengaged with your association. There has been a heap of communication about the EGMs that were held yesterday
I’m guessing high – because I voted No and know of others doing the same – and we were a tilly % so go figure – perhaps no one much voted and proxy’s carried it?
Was hoping they’d both go broke and we’d finally get some real representation.
Why don’t you start your own association since you have all of the answers?
As I see it, this is nothing more that 2 conflicted associations joining together. Drop the corporate sponsors, and represent Advisers only, then I will take you seriously. Could the new name be the Association of Product Employees or (APE) for short instead?
Corporate Sponsors have been dropped.
Would love to know the % of actual members in the FPA voted at all. I ask because majority I talk to including myself simply do not care. The FPA has let us down countless times and the apathy towards them is obvious.
About 2,500 FPA members voted. Its on the FPA’s website on the first page.
Seriously, that high?
So can anyone recommend a new association that actually can do something for its members, for the last 5 years both of them have left members down with their hidden agenda
Why don’t you set one up?