Survey says Govt's $11 opt-in cost a fallacy

The Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten, may have accepted $11 as the likely average cost to planners of implementing the Government's proposed two-year opt-in arrangements, but a significant majority of planners believe it will cost $100 or more.

That is the bottom line of a survey conducted by Money Management almost immediately following Shorten's release of the first draft of his Future of Financial Advice legislation last week.

The $11 a week figure was the result of research conducted by actuarial consultancy Rice Warner, and the company's principal Michael Rice has subsequently signalled it will be issuing a submission to further explain how the firm arrived at the figure.

Treasury officials earlier in the year indicated to a Senate Committee they had seen industry research suggesting opt-in would cost around $100 per client.

Money Management last week pointed to the Government's acceptance of the Rice Warner $11 assessment, and asked what they believed it would cost.

The survey found that 89 per cent of respondents believed it would cost more than $50 per client, while 66 per cent of respondents believed opt-in would cost at least $100 per client, with a further 5 per cent of respondents believing it would cost $75 per client.

Only 8 per cent of respondents to the survey agreed with the Rice Warner figure of $11 per client.

Full results of the survey are published in this week's edition of Money Management.