Momentum grows on separating product from advice
The Financial Planning Association (FPA) will on Thursday seek to convince the Senate Committee reviewing the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) of the value of a process capable of definitively separating financial advice from product sales.
Having cited the latest Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) action against Commonwealth Financial Planning and Financial Wisdom as something giving impetus to the FPA's moves, Rantall said he believed it was important that consumers were made fully aware of the differences between product sales and the provision of advice.
He said the FPA would therefore be putting forward a 10-point plan to the Senate Economic Committee to address the situation.
Money Management understands that the essence of the FPA's proposal is that the provision of financial product information should be regulated with consumers receiving a warning in the same terms that apply to the provision of general advice.
This approach would then build on the FPA's initial submission to the Senate Committee within which it said that such warnings "should make it clear that the information is not financial advice, it is information about a financial product or a class of financial products".
Rantall said that he also believed that the legal enshrinement of the term "financial planner/adviser" need to be central to the differentiating between those providing information relating to products and financial planners providing strategic financial advice.
The FPA has already argued within its submission that licensing and all the other forms of regulation which currently apply to general advice should apply to financial product information and that the term ‘financial planner/adviser' "should be defined by legislation, in order to prevent individuals who offer financial product information/factual information from representing themselves as financial planners or financial advisers".
Recommended for you
Advice firms are increasing their base salaries by as much as $50k to attract talent, particularly seeking advisers with a portable book of clients, but equity offerings remain off the table.
MLC Expand has appointed retirement specialist Andrew Long to work with advisers and licensees and drive growth for its recently launched retirement solution.
Despite banks largely having exited the industry, advisers under institutional licensees are least likely to switch while 26 advisers have been appointed to a licensee more than 10 times.
Insignia Financial has shared a progress update on the acquisition by US private equity firm CC Capital as well as the departure of a long-standing director.
