Sir Anthony, who is patron of the SMSF Association (SMSFA), told delegates to the industry body’s conference in Melbourne yesterday that SMSFs have been a “centrepiece of the Australian superannuation success story”, but that some sections of the advice community are holding back public confidence.
“Our experience in recent years has shown that one of the greatest threats to the existence of public confidence in the superannuation industry arises from the provision of poor, and in some instances, flawed financial advice on the part of financial advisers, including advisers employed by major Australian financial institutions,” the SMSFA patron said.
Expressing concern that the best interest duty for advisers had become “mired in controversy”, Sir Anthony said that an effective fiduciary duty was an important element of raising adviser standards, along with increased education levels.
“If this comes about, as it should, we could accurately describe financial advisers as members of a profession and not as product salesmen.”
The former judge endorsed SMSFA’s ambition to create a “class of SMSF professionals whose relevant capabilities will extend well beyond that of accountants and financial planners”.
The recruitment processes of the banks are a good indication of what to expect from their employed financial planning staff. We have had two graduates leave us in the last 12 months to join the banks. Both confessed that they did not have an interest in a career in financial planning which was reflected in their lack of attention to the work they did and they showed no interest in developing their financial planning knowledge. They were both employed by the banks as paraplanners on higher salaries and the reference checks ( we were their first employer ) were virtually non existent.
Lewis, I agree, but please don’t imply that all bank planners are salesman.
Some banks have excellent advisers.
Unfortunately the judge does not understand that there are still salesmen and there are independent advisers. He thinks we are all salesmen working for banks and insurance companies. Whilst FOFA was supposed to stop the salesmen it doesn’t because those legislating don’t understand it either