Enshrinement passes House of Representatives

Only Coalition members in the Senate now stand in the way of the terms ‘financial planner' and ‘financial adviser' being enshrined in legislation, following the passage of the necessary legislation within the Corporations Amendment (Simple Corporate Bonds and Other Measures) Bill 2013 through the House of Representatives.

And although the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Senator Mathias Cormann, has described the enshrinement legislation as unnecessary, the Coalition is not expected to mount significant opposition to the passage of the legislation through the Senate before Parliament rises in a few weeks' time.

The passage of the legislation — something which had its origins in a deal struck by the Financial Planning Association (FPA) ahead of the introduction of the Future of Financial Advice legislation to the House of Representatives last year — has been broadly welcomed by the planning industry.

FPA general manager of policy and government relations, Dante De Gori, said he was pleased to see the legislation pass the House of Representatives and that the interests of members and consumers would be overwhelmingly better protected when the bill finally passed the Parliament.

He said it represented a significant step towards restoring consumer confidence in financial planning.

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) particularly welcomed the legislation because it enshrined both the term ‘financial planner' and the term ‘financial adviser'.

AFA chief executive Brad Fox said this was important as both terms had the same meaning and were used interchangeably within the industry.

"This piece of legislation has been reviewed by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services and they supported it," Fox said. "The AFA continues to believe that the legislation is good for both consumers of financial advice services and for the financial advisers who provide those services."

The Minister for Financial Services, Bill Shorten, said the amendments enshrining the terms ‘financial adviser' and ‘financial planner', and similar terms, would enhance consumer protections by making it easier for Australian consumers to identify genuine providers of financial product advice.

"The amendments will make it an offence for a person to hold themselves out to be an authorised financial adviser or financial planner when they are not, or to use terms of similar importance, thereby helping to protect consumers against property spruikers and other unlicensed operators," he said.