Are licensees unwilling to fund technology solutions?
The Federal Government should be considering grants and tax incentives for the integration of regtech and fintech solutions to help drive down the cost of providing financial advice, according to the Financial Planning Association (FPA).
The FPA has also complained that financial planners working within larger organisations often find themselves hamstrung because their licensees lack the willingness to provide regtech solutions.
In a submission filed with the Senate Select Committee on Financial Technology and Regulatory Technology, the FPA pointed out that one of the biggest challenges for consumers accessing financial advice services was the time and cost it took to provide a piece of advice.
It said that the provision of advice took 26 hours and cost up to $6,500.
“Financial planners would benefit from being able to select from “Best of Breed” technology to significantly reduce the time and cost of delivering advice by improving the efficiency of advice delivery,” the FPA said.
“For this reason, the Government could consider grants or tax incentives for the integration of fintech and regtech solutions where it demonstrably solves efficiency and access to financial services for consumers,” it said.
The FPA also urged a standardised approach to data.
“Another benefit of this sort of standardisation is that the current challenge our members express when working for or being authorised by larger organisations, where there is a lack of willingness by licensees to provide fintech and regtech solutions to financial planners and their clients due to their organisational procurement process (as well as potentially facing their own integration challenges),” it said.
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