FOFA deja vu for finance industry
At the same time as Australia's financial planning industry is seeking to secure key amendments to the Government's Future of Financial Advice bills, the National Financial Services Federation (NFSF) has found itself in the same situation with respect to Consumer Credit and Corporations legislation.
And in similar fashion to financial planning organisations such as the Association of Financial Advisers, the NFSF has been strongly lobbying the independents in the House of Representatives amid concerns that the Minister for Financial Services, Bill Shorten, "will try and ram the bill through without any workable amendments".
In an update sent to members this week, NFSF chief executive Phil Johns seemed to echo many of the concerns being expressed by financial planning industry representatives when he said the process was far from locked down and "there are several possible twists and turns".
Among those "twists and turns" was whether the entire bill would be delayed, whether some elements would be stripped out of the legislation and dealt with later, and whether some changes could be amended by negotiation.
Johns said that everyone his organisation had met had delivered one key message - "that the best course/the cleanest course of action is to get the amendments we need put in by the Minister, otherwise we could be in for a significant fight".
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