Accountants targeted on bad advice
The role of accountants in providing financial advice and product recommendations under their legislative exemption needs to be vigorously pursued by the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, according to financial planning dealer group Millennium3.
It said while the media had focused on the role of financial planners in promoting and inappropriately recommending schemes such as Timbercorp and Great Southern, accountants had a far greater involvement in the promotion of such tax-advantaged schemes than was currently being recognised.
“The role of accountants in providing financial advice, or product recommendations under their legislative exemption, is a matter that we suggest needs to be rigorously pursued by the inquiry,” the submission said.
The Millennium3 document also argued that product commission payments played a less significant role in the corporate collapses than was being popularly recognised.
“While ineffective management of commercial tensions and poor remuneration models may have contributed to these failures, we believe that an objective analysis may identify poor governance structures, flawed financial models and ineffective product design as more relevant issues,” it said.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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