Will the QOA help advice accessibility?
The Quality of Advice Review proposals present an opportunity to stop advice becoming exclusively accessible by wealthy Australians, according to Colonial First State.
The firm said the number of advised customer balances over $500,000 had tripled since 2019 at the same time as the number of advised customer balances below $150,000 had declined from 40% to less than 20%.
This was exacerbated by the fact that fees associated with a Statement of Advice had increased by around 40% to over $3,500 while cheaper Records of Advice had seen limited usage.
“Short-form, interim approaches such as the use of the Record of Advice have not been widely utilised as they were limited to narrow use cases and took a layered and prescriptive approach to determining whether they could be used.
“Whilst well intentioned the practical effect did little to address the costs and risks of providing financial advice. We have seen few examples of improved access to financial advice as a result of it.”
It hoped the Quality of Advice Review would help those with lower incomes or women who were less likely to be able to afford advice to access the service.
“We believe the proposals put forward in the review are a step in the right direction and deserve careful consideration. We are also not aware of any alternative proposals that have been put forward which strike a better balance between quality and affordability.
“This review provides a timely opportunity to rebalance the regulatory regime such that all Australians have the opportunity to access financial advice to improve their financial wellbeing.”
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
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Water finds its own level. Advisers have reacted either by leaving or by closely looking at their increased costs, cancelled revenue streams and so far unknown additional financial burdens surrounding the moronic ASIC funding model and the CSLR. QOA is another talk fest which will achieve nothing except more confusion on all fronts.
Quantity of Advice review? Really, so why are they looking at Quantity of Advice? How did that happen and why is it not being reported by the media? Seriously - journalist?
Who cares what CFS has to say. CFS were a major contributor to the diabolical behaviour evidenced by the RC. Stick with flogging product.