SPAA national technical director Graeme Colley told ifa the comments made by ASIC Commissioner Peter Kell to the CPA Australia conference this week could potentially lead to negative perceptions of the SMSF sector among consumers.
“If the message that’s taken out of [Commissioner Kell’s comments] is that poor advice is endemic within the industry, that’s an exaggeration and is clearly not the case,” Colley said.
“We are concerned that this is the way some people may perceive the comments,” he said. “We would hope people view the commissioner’s comments in a balanced way and understand that the vast majority of people will get at least adequate if not good advice in relation to their SMSF.”
Colley – who took over the role of national technical director following the move of Peter Burgess to AMP earlier this month – said there was a broader concern that the SMSF sector is often implicated in cases of wrongdoing by financial advisers.
“This often happens where a financial planner may have been found guilty of fraud in the courts and an SMSF is in some way involved. The SMSF angle seems to get all the attention in the mainstream press, rather than the general advice given by that person,” he said.
Responding to Commissioner Kell’s charge that some SMSF advisers have “room for improvement” in their explanation – or lack thereof – of compensation options, Colley said the responsibility lies with dealer groups.
“Information about compensation and dispute resolution options available to clients are really the responsibility of licensees, who should be ensuring that financial planners are in possession of that information and relaying it to clients,” he said.
“You would expect as part of training from dealer groups, that authorised reps are made well aware of the compensation and dispute processes and the obligations to explain this to clients.”
It seems more and more apparent that this government wants to see the demise of self employed advisers. They want everyone to get lowest common denominator advice from bank employess seloling their own retail products. Fortunately in September we can deal with this as a nation.
Are you sure Mr Kell’s comments were not aimed at the ‘property spruiker’ sector who simply receiving SMSF ‘implementation requests’ from their ‘clients’ and are their ‘advice is not regulated at present?
I agree with Graeme entirely. It is worrying when even the regulators appear to blur the boundaries between what is an investment related issue, and what is a structure related issue. SMSFs are only a structure that help provide for retirement. What happens within it from an investment sense is no different to what is happening in the broader community (retirement and non-retirement assets). Wrong doing in investment advice, or lack of disclosure etc is not a SMSF issue unless it can be shown there is a significant difference between this and other structures.