Incidental advice: an accoutant's worst nightmare
Providing incidental financial planning advice in the course of normal accounting practice has emerged as the sleeping giant of the CLERP 6 proposals.
Providing incidental financial planning advice in the course of normal accounting practice has emerged as the sleeping giant of the CLERP 6 proposals.
Under the proposals, accountants who wish to offer any financial planning advice will need to obtain a proper authority from an established dealer group or obtain a securi-ties licence themselves.
This is likely to lead to a rush of accountants joining financial planning groups before the January 2001 implementation date for CLERP 6 legislation. It also goes some way to explaining the emergence of the financial planning designations launched this year by the two powerful accounting associations, the Association of CPAs and the Insti-tute of Chartered Accountants (ICAA)
Incidental advice emerged as one of the key issues at the recent ICAA financial plan-ning conference in Fiji.
Some delegates expressed anger at the government’s attempt to regulate their prac-tices.
“I’ve been giving financial for more than 20 years and I haven’t needed the govern-ment to tell me I could do it,” said one delegate.
There were even calls for the ICAA to get its own dealer’s licence so that accountants could become proper authority holders to the Institute.
The Institute said it had actively lobbied the federal government over the proposals but said: “we are likely to lose that battle”.
ICAA president told the conference the Institute would be putting “big bucks” behind a campaign to promote the designation CA — Financial Planning Specialist.
“The Institute has said it wants to diversify out of compliance work for a number of years now and many members see financial planning as an area of strategic growth,” he said.
Chairman of the specialisation board at the ICAA, Richard Friend, told the conference ICAA members would not be just any financial planner, but a Chartered Accountant financial planner with all the associations of excellence.
“We don’t need to become professional, we as chartered accountants are already there,” he said.
“If you can take this opportunity, the goldmine we have been talking about today is yours.”
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