Fee disclosure requirements problematic
The fee disclosure statement arrangements within the Government's Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) changes are ultimately going to deliver clients less information than they are currently receiving, according to Premium Wealth Management chief executive Paul Harding-Davis.
Davis has told Money Management that he is struggling to see the benefits the fee disclosure statement arrangements will deliver to consumers, except that they will be receiving the more limited information provided in the statements more frequently.
Harding-Davis' criticism of the fee disclosure statement arrangements have come at the same time as groups such as the Association of Financial Advisers have expressed concern that the changes will create particular challenges for planners who have recently purchased new books of clients.
They said this complexity is likely to be magnified if the purchase of those books of clients was brokered through a third party major such as AMP Limited or MLC.
"Much will depend on just how much information relating to that book of clients was captured and delivered to the new planner, enabling them to understand what was promised and what, ultimately, was delivered," one spokesman said.
Harding-Davis said the bottom line was that the fee disclosure statement arrangements were unduly administratively complex and had the potential to create a real headache for those planners seeking to service recently-acquired books of clients.
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