Financial advisers are pointing to the involvement of members of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC’s) Consumer Advisory Panel in the formulation of a Code of Ethics submission to the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) as highly concerning.
The concern of the financial advisers has been driven by the fact that the ASIC Consumer Advisory Panel includes representatives from consumer groups CHOICE and the Consumer Action Law Centre (CALC), both of which also had representation on the board of FASEA.
A submission developed by two Griffith University academics, Dr Hugh Breakey and Professor Charles Sampford notes on the bottom of page one that “this submission was developed with input from members of ASIC’s Consumer Advisory Panel. It also incorporates issues raised in the FASEA Consumer Forum of June 29, 2018”.
The submission lodged by Breakey and Sampford is regarded as having been supportive of the approach adopted in the controversial Standard 3 of the FASEA Code of Ethics while a separate submission lodged by CHOICE is regarded as having been equally supportive.
ASIC documentation confirms that both CHOICE and CALC are represented on its Consumer Advisory Panel and CALC’s Catriona Lowe and Carolyn Bond, a former CALC office-holder, were on the board of FASEA at the time of the submissions being received along with CHOICE representative, Elisa Freeman. It is not known if they were representatives to the ASIC Consumer Advisory Panel at the time the code of ethics submissions were received.
Bond and Freeman were still members of the FASEA board while Lowe resigned her position to take a position with the Australian Energy Regulator.
It has also been pointed out that another board member and the man who stood in as interim chief executive of FASEA, Dr Mark Brimble is a professor of Finance at Griffith University.
Advisers have previously pointed to Griffith University’s website reference to the Breakey and Sampford submission defining it as a “consultancy/commercial research” relationship with ASIC pertaining to submissions to FASEA (June/ASIC).
The links between the Breakey and Sampford submission and ASIC’s Consumer Advisory Panel have only been identified since FASEA, under pressure from members of a Parliamentary Committee, made the 2018 code of ethics submissions publicly available at the beginning of this week.
