Chris Pearce: Easing the burden of compliance
There can scarcely be a financial planner in Australia who would begrudge Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer Chris Pearce his inclusion on Money Management’s list of the industry’s top 10 influential people in financial services.
The recognition is timely, too, considering it was only last month that Pearce released draft regulations to implement refinements to the Federal Government’s Financial Services Reform Act (FSRA).
The refinements, first mooted by Pearce in February, will ease the compliance burden heaped on planners in particular by the advent of the FSRA in March 2004.
Specifically, the refinements will effectively reduce the size of the cumbersome Product Disclosure Statements (PDS) and Statements of Advice (SOA).
It is not only that Pearce has delivered the goods in redressing some of the more onerous, and unnecessary, aspects of FSRA that has won him the respect and gratitude of the industry.
His performance in the compliance arena has been characterised throughout by a forthright recognition of the problems the Government’s over-zealous prescription of FSR has caused for planners and consumers alike.
Pearce’s comments at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) summer school in February, for example, sent a wave of relief through the industry that the Government was not seemingly impervious to reason after all.
His statement to students that he was working on “a series of proposed refinements” to FSRA was all the more welcome for the financial services industry for having come as a surprise.
Although Pearce didn’t specify at the time which aspects of the legislation would be reviewed, a hint in his address that he would be revising SOAs was music to the ears of a beleaguered industry.
On another occasion, he went so far as to criticise the FSR for having “resulted in such lengthy and complex documents that consumers are actually worse off than if they received no information at all”.
An even-handedness towards the interest of both planners and consumers was evident in his announcement last month of the release of the draft regulations, which are open for public comment until November 4.
Pearce emphasised that while the changes were aimed at easing the compliance load for planners, they would have no detrimental impact on the protections that had been put in place for consumers.
“The proposals paper recognises the importance of ensuring consumers receive information that is both concise and relevant to their needs,” he said.
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