No room for RBA in regulatory mix – IFSA
Richard Gilbert
This week’s unprecedented Reserve Bank commentary on financial planning fee structures and superannuation fund comparisons has drawn a heated response from the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA).
IFSA chief executive Richard Gilbert has expressed deep concern at the comments made by RBA deputy governor Ric Battellino in circumstances in which he said there are already two Commonwealth regulators in the financial services space — the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
He said that there was a need for clarity with respect to regulatory jurisdiction and this was something that was not being assisted by the comments made by Battellino.
Battellino earlier this week used an address to a finance and banking industry conference to discuss the impact of fees and charges on the relative returns provided by retail and industry funds.
He said that while it was difficult to isolate the exact cause of the underperformance of retail funds, an important contributing factor would have been that fees and expenses on retail funds were typically higher than for industry and corporate funds.
Gilbert said that the comments had been unhelpful in the context of the clearly defined regulatory roles within the Australian financial services industry.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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