APESB facing questions following APES 230 fumble
The good news for accountants involved in the provision of financial advice is that the Accounting Professional and Ethical Standards Board (APESB) started 2013 by extending the time-frames with respect to its APES 230 standard and implying a capacity for changes at the margin.
On all the available evidence, the final iteration of APES 230 will much more suitably align with the manner in which the Future of Financial Advice legislation impacts financial planners, therefore not leaving accountants at any substantial disadvantage.
If this proves to be the ultimate outcome, then all credit to the major accounting organisations who worked assiduously through November and December to correct what was emerging as a thoroughly anomalous outcome for their members.
However, the question which must linger in the minds of all those involved is how a body such as the APESB could have generated an APES 230 approach so much at odds with what was clearly the preferred approach of its broader constituency?
It is a measure of how far removed the APESB's approach was from the majority interest of its constituency that all three of the major accounting organisations reacted against its late-2012 APES 230 announcement: the Institute of Public Accountants indicated it would be setting its own standard, while the Institute of Chartered Accountants and CPA Australia lobbied vigorously for change.
From an outsider's perspective, it would appear that the APESB's approach to the development of APES 230 may have been unduly influenced by the lobbying of a vocal minority whose agenda and experience did not match that of accountants operating within groups such as Count Financial or Premium Wealth Advisers.
There is no mystery about who made up that vocal minority – most of those involved made their attitudes very public throughout the original debate around APES 230.
It is a matter for the major accounting groups how they move to ensure that their members are not similarly blind-sided in the future, but a starting point would seem to be acting to determine member attitudes and then representing those attitudes to the APESB in the strongest possible terms.
Accountants have long been an integral part of the broader financial planning community and it follows that, when providing holistic financial advice, they should be doing so on the same general terms as financial planners.
Those accountants who expressed their disappointment with the APES 230 announcement had every right to be upset.
It is to be hoped that their concerns will be mostly addressed when the APESB makes its final announcement on the issue – and the vocal minority fall silent.
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