ASIC’s Medcraft has no regrets on CPA Advice
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) chair, Greg Medcraft appears to harbour no regrets about having helped launch CPA Australia’s financial planning venture, CPA Advice, saying he did so to encourage more accountants into the financial advice arena.
Specifically asked by South Australian Senator, Nick Xenophon whether he regretted being involved in launching a “$5.7 million dollar financial advice venture that generated $46,000 dollars in income last year while paying out $3.8 million dollars in staff expenses and $1 million paid to eight directors”, Medcraft said that hindsight was a wonderful thing.
Appearing before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, Medcraft acknowledged that there was “always that risk wherever you appear”.
“In the case of CPA Australia, to be clear, the reason that we did that is that both governments have supported accountants coming into the financial advice system,” he said.
“The reason we supported that is we thought, 'This is a great initiative to help bring accountants into the system’.”
“Philosophically, one of the big issues is to get advice you can trust. The accountants are highly regarded. We supported that,” Medcraft said. “We did support also the fact that the accountants have a very good code of ethics and whatever. We welcomed that initiative. That was consistent with [the Future of Financial Advice] FOFA.”
Referencing the launch event held in 2015 in which he appeared on stage with recently sacked CPA Australia chief executive, Alex Malley, Medcraft said: “At that stage, it was announced that it had to go through the whole of licensing and whatever”.
“But we thought it was a good initiative, frankly, in terms of bringing more accountants in the system,” the ASIC chair said.
Specifically asked whether he harboured any regrets, Medcraft answered no and pointed to the number of accountants in Australia saying, “I would hope that those accountants, I am sure almost every one of them are really ethical and perform well. If they want to deliver advice, let’s hope they find a way of doing it”.
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