Planning may be hit by Budget user-pays
Financial planning organisations and firms will be closely examining tonight's Federal Budget to see whether the Government will impose a more radical user-pays regime on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) which would result in higher licensee fees and other costs.
The Government signaled more than a month ago that it was attracted to a more definitive user-pays regime for the financial services regulators, with media reports canvassing that the Budget would include the sale of the of ASIC's business names registry as part of a broader sale of Government-owned businesses.
ASIC has itself proposed adoption of a user-pays funding model as the most appropriate solution, with its submission to the Financial Systems Inquiry advocating, "a user pays (cost recovery) funding model that better reflects the costs associated with market regulation".
It claimed such an approach could drive economic efficiencies and "can also provide better incentives for industries to improve their own standards and practices".
The submission argued that there were limitations and inefficiencies in the way ASIC is currently funded and that the "costs currently imposed on our regulated population do not accurately reflect the costs of regulation".
With the Government signaling a consolidation of government departments and agencies, there has also been speculation around the continuing status of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal in the context of its funding reliance on ASIC.
There is also an expectation that tonight's Budget papers may reveal an eventual lifting in the superannuation preservation in line with a gradual increase in the age pension age to 67 and then 70.
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