Licensees struggling to combat advice wars

Australian Financial Services Licensees continue to struggle to find ways to communicate the value of financial advice to the Government, regulators, the media and the community in general.

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) has created a committee for licensees it hopes will generate the answer to this problem, among others.

AFA chief executive Richard Klipin said one of the issues facing licensees in its Licensee Leadership Forum was creating a cohesive strategy to approach politicians, regulators and the media regarding the purpose and value of the financial advice industry. As yet neither the association nor licensees have been able to find a way to effectively communicate this message. He said the messages of the advice industry hadn’t been focused, united or always complementary.

Klipin said over the past decade advisers had been “sledged by the industry funds movement, and wedged by all of the profession’s critics”. He acknowledged some of the criticism had been “self-inflicted” but described other criticism as “grossly unfair”, adding the advice industry’s response to the criticism had been “fragmented at best”.

Klipin said the forum had the support of Australian Financial Services Licensees representing the interests of around 5,000 advisers. The AFA has around 1,500 members.

The association ran an introductory session to the forum in January followed by a working group in late February. Klipin said around 30 major and mid-tier licensees attended the introductory session. Those included representatives from Count Financial, ING-owned Millennium3, representatives from MLC-owned dealer groups, Matrix Planning Solutions, Infocus, TFSA, Aon and Synchron.

Klipin said the interests of licensees and advisers are “often complementary” and only occasionally not complementary.

“Our view is they’re part of the landscape and our experience is that their interests are aligned with advisers.”