Financial services associations: strength in numbers
Two interesting and welcome events occurred in the financial planning industry last week — the Financial Planning Association (FPA) agreed with the Association of Financial Advisers (FPA) to stand together on regulatory reform and the FPA then reached similar agreement with the Self-Managed Superannuation Professionals Association of Australia (SPAA) on policy and professional development.
The two events can and should be interpreted as the evolution of a very necessary coalition within the financial planning industry and one that, if successful, will ensure the sector is seen as talking with one voice on the key issues affecting the operations of the industry and the commercial viability of financial planning practices.
But no one should be so naive as to suggest that the arrangements cemented between the three bodies mean they have abandoned the core policy elements that have given them their differentiation. The FPA and the AFA will continue to disagree about some elements of adviser remuneration, and SPAA will continue to have views that set it apart from both the FPA and the AFA.
However, in the aftermath of the financial planning industry finding itself out flanked on the question of intra-fund advice, the co-operative and consultative approach signaled by the three organisations should be welcomed by financial planners.
In circumstances where a round-table of industry chief executives has identified broad support for a co-regulatory model for the financial services industry, and some Government figures, including the chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the financial services industry, Bernie Ripoll, have indicated similar views, the industry needs unity on the key issues.
If co-regulation is the answer, the bodies acknowledged as being genuinely representative of the sector need to work together to ensure higher standards are achieved and the best interests of the industry are met. They should adhere to the old political truism: ‘Disunity is death.’
— Mike Taylor
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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