FOFA changes more an opportunity than a challenge

The principals of the company which provided strategy and restructuring advice to the now-collapsed AFS Group, Seaview Consulting, have claimed the Government's Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) changes should be viewed as a "catalyst for long-term business transformation that will actually improve operational efficiency".

The Seaview Consulting director, Bob Neill and David Fotheringham, this week lamented the fact that financial practice planning owners were falling into two distinct groups — those who regarded FOFA as an opportunity and those seeking to do the minimum to meet their obligations.

"The first regards FOFA as an opportunity and are utilising the changes to review all their activities and implement strategies to build long-term, sustainable and ‘leverageable' businesses of the future," they claimed. "The second group are addressing how best to meet the regulatory requirements forced upon them and generally making the appropriate adjustments required to meet the minimum of those obligations."

However, the Seaview directors said they were of the view that the next five years were going to reward the advice "innovators" — those who acknowledged that the models of the past were not the solutions for the future.

"The one certainty in what is a rapidly changing financial services landscape is that business is going to get more challenging and more competitive for the participants, and those that adapt to meet the change will have greater prospects of success," Bob Neill said.

The now-failed AFS Group last year retained Seaview Consulting to undertake a strategic review of its operations, with the findings of that review presented in February — apparently too late to forestall an exodus of planning practices.