Deputy commissioner Greg Tanzer told the CPA National SMSF Conference the regulator will be visiting small groups of accountants in each state to understand how they are operating.
“We’re going to conduct targeted surveillance on some licensed accountants to assess whether they’re meeting their ongoing obligations when giving financial product advice in relation to SMSFs. We’re going to seek in particular to identify unlicensed conduct and to take appropriate action,” Mr Tanzer said at the conference yesterday.
“We have begun that program of surveillance. I won’t tell you if we’ve actually started visiting [accountants] but the planning is definitely under way.”
According to Mr Tanzer, ASIC will likely release the findings of its surveillance in a report towards the end of the financial year.
“From our perspective, the transparency of outcomes is quite important,” Mr Tanzer said.
The deputy commissioner said he does not believe there are large numbers of unlicensed accountants continuing to give advice.
“Some people, when they look at the 1,159 licences having been applied for, say to me that there are a lot of accountants out there who are continuing to give advice on SMSFs and haven’t got a limited licence or haven’t become an authorised representative or haven’t taken out a full licence themselves. In a sense [they’re suggesting ]it’s like some form of passive resistance to the new regulatory regime,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s true. All I would say is that I can’t imagine that anyone who comes from a professional background would want to join the club of deliberately [being] unlicensed advisers, because that is a club that has the property spruikers, the cold-calling scammers, and the offshore investment scammers.
“That’s the club that a person would be choosing to join, not some virtuous passive resistance,” Mr Tanzer said.
There is a very big knowledge gap between what accountants know and what they are expected to know under the new regime. From an AFSL business perspective we have decided to not license accountants unless they are closely affiiated with our financial planning AR’s and are familiar with their processes.
Wow. What an embarrassing statement from our regulator. If he had any credibility with the advice community, it is now gone. A clean out is required at ASIC – urgently! What hope has the Australian public got, when our regulator acts with such arrogance when they receive feedback about wrongdoing. The comments are so far removed from reality, it is frightening.
Well said Scott, the accounting world has for far too many years given bucket loads of AFSL advice with zero AFSL compliance.
Why did ASIC not check for non AFSL compliance before, as it is massive?
And if ASIC ever stick their head out from under their cosy doona they hide under in Canberra they will find very little has changed and accountants are still providing massive amounts of AFSL advice with ZERO AFSL compliance.
Having spoken to four accountants the responses have been (1) all advice I give is factual so I don’t need to be licensed (2) if I file note everything there is no need to give an SOA (3) I will probably get licensed eventually but there is no rush as I am a CPA and won’t be reviewed and the SOA template I have seen is 2 pages long so it shouldn’t cause any extra work (4) Can you please look after this as I don’t want to risk my business.
Whilst it appears ASIC have formed their opinion prior to any research (again) my small sample seems to indicate that the resistance is not that passive.