Former Prime Minister, John Howard has predicted a strong future for financial advisers and urged them to consider themselves as professionals placed in a unique time in Australian history.
Speaking to advisers at the recent Association of Financial Advisers National Conference in Canberra, Howard said financial advisers would face a growing demand for services and were within a growth industry which has resulted in a greater focus on lifting professional standards.
“We have an ageing population and the phenomenon of living longer and healthier and the consequences of the low interest rates with an enormous number of people who are still cautious with what they want to do with the money they have accumulated,” Howard said.
“I think the industry will grow and the importance of an organisation like this [the AFA] is the maintenance of the standards,” he added.
“Treat it like a profession and call it like a profession because it is. The interaction you have with the public, those people who have your services will always remember. I am optimistic about your profession and you have every reason to be so yourselves,” Howard stated.
“I am optimistic about your profession and you have every reason to be so yourselves”
He also added his opposition to calls for a Royal Commission into the banking sector pointing out that its stability was one of the key reasons Australia was able to move smoothly through the global financial crisis.
He said there were four key reasons that benefitted Australia in the lead up to and during the GFC, these being that Australia had no net debt and a strong balance sheet, 25 years of economic reform from both sides of politics, a strong, stable and profitable banking system and a large market in China.
“Isn’t it interesting, when we look back on those four things. Isn’t it counter intuitive really, very strange, even perverse that despite those realities we seem as a nation to have forgotten the contribution of those four things,” Howard said.
“Right at the moment, as many of you will know and some may have experienced it, we have an interrogation of the banks going on in Canberra. Banks are accountable, politicians are accountable and advisers are accountable,” he added.
“It passes strange to me that a banking system that carried us through the financial crisis and was applauded around the world as being well regulated and stable and profitable should potentially face the search lights of a Royal Commission if there were to be a change of government.”
