Yesterday the FPA announced that Tupicoffs managing director Neil Kendall will be taking on the role of chair from late November – just months after taking steps to make his practice compliant with the Corporations Act definition of an “independent” financial service provider.
“Being independent means we have no ownership links or affiliations with product manufacturers – we believe this is the future for financial planning in Australia,” Mr Kendall said at that time.
Mr Kendall is also an active member of the Boutique Financial Planners (BFP) lobby group – as are incoming board members Marisa Broome and Delma Newton – which has been a longstanding advocate of greater AFSL ownership transparency and a critic of vertical integration.
Reflecting on the appointment of Mr Kendall, veteran adviser Tony Bates of Sydney boutique Bluepoint Consulting said it bodes well for the association’s policy agenda.
“The appointment of IFA Neil Kendall as chair and other IFAs to the [FPA] board is at long last a huge leap in the right direction,” Mr Bates told ifa.
“Neil is one of us; he trod the same path as me and others from product-centric advice to client-centric advice.
“We should never again allow a board advocating advice to be dominated by people advocating product.”
Mr Bates – who has re-joined the FPA after letting his membership and CFP accreditation lapse more than a decade ago – hopes that the election will help other “disenfranchised IFAs” reconsider joining the association and fighting for a return to “Gwen Fletcher’s consumer-focused organisation”.
However, AIOFP executive director Peter Johnston said that while he welcomes “any independent person attaining a high position in the industry”, he did not endorse Mr Bates’ suggestion that IFAs re-embrace the FPA.
“We believe associations should be homologous – the AFA should stay in the risk space, SPAA in the SMSF market, AIOFP with independents and FPA with institutionally aligned/owned advisers,” Mr Johnston said.
Mr Johnston nonetheless said he wished Mr Kendall well in his new role, adding that the AIOFP will be “watching with interest” how “Mr Kendall’s position on vertically-integrated models resonates with the FPA membership and stakeholders”.
Meanwhile, a number of commenters on ifa have raised concerns that Mr Kendall’s involvement with Financial Rescue – a business that helps consumers recover investment losses – may make him unsuitable for the position.
Wonder no longer.
The FPA is a professional body. It represents the public interest first and planners second.
The CFP mark is owned by the Financial Planning Standards Board which is independent of the FPA.
You will find that the FPA takes a view that professionalism is a personal choice for the adviser and is not dependent on adoption of a particular business model.
The financial planning association, and the holder of CFP designations, I thought was supposed to be representing financial planners of all persuasions, regardless of for whom they work. As the FPA is the holder of the CFP designation and is pushing for it being a wider requirement for all planners, and that therefore the FPA will have planner members from independent, vertical or whatever other angle you wish to label a financial planner by. I think it is incumbent on the FPA to be agnostic in respect of its leanings and its preaching. if it wants to be the industry planning body it must be open to planners of all types. If it starts representing one type of planner over another it can no longer hold itself out to be the professions association. It can only then at best be a boutique association/lobby group, not the industry’s professional association.
Hiya Matthew – Patrick Canion did good work raising financial planning professionalism and should be thanked for his contribution.
The associations mentioned are not homologous. They certainly perform different functions, but they do not share a similar structure. The AFA and the AIOFP are industry groups. The FPA is a professional body. SPAA and the BFP (overlooked entirely by Mr Johnson) are selective groups representing professional advisers.
One of the few truly independent financial advisers in Australia now Chairman of the FPA and at least one AMP aligned adviser pushed off the board by a non-institutional aligned adviser.
Good signs.