Individual Adviser Licensing? Your Say…

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Do you support the call for individual registration of financial advisers?
  • Yes (60%)
  • No (24%)
  • Not sure (16%)

The call by the FPA for a professional registration for individual financial planners to replace the current system that requires an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) to provide advice, has already attracted  strong interest, including a commentary from six key licensee firms. (See Key Licensee Firms Respond to New FPA Policy.)

The recommendation is the cornerstone of  FPA’s “ground-breaking” five-year policy platform which, it says, if enacted will overhaul the way financial planners are licensed.

FPA CEO Dante De Gori says in a statement that the law should be changed to focus the AFSL system on the regulation of financial products and remove the requirement for an AFSL to cover the provision of financial advice.

He states in our story that: “Contemporary financial planning is about a lot more than recommending financial products. There is a wide variety of topics that might be covered by financial advice and many may not include a product recommendation. Regulation of financial advice should reflect the variety of advice that can be provided, and not continue to be tied to financial product recommendations.”

So what do advisers think? Do you support the call for individual registration?

Let us know your thoughts and we’ll report back next week…

 

 



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2 COMMENTS

  1. The current maze of compliance and auditing is a road to oblivion.
    The largest Licensees with deep pockets and huge resources, are struggling to meet all the requirements, so what hope would individual advisers have?

    The FPA have always been armchair experts and their inept response over the years to all the Life Insurance reviews and the Royal Commission, has proven that they do not fully understand issues before they put forward their views.

  2. I have been self-licensed for nearly twenty years, so I could avoid the senseless requirements of the big players to put profits before people. The recent regulatory tsunami has just about done my head in. As an adviser, I just want to be able to give my clients sound advice. I am on an ASIC register of advisers. If there was a sensible group professional indemnity offering, I would be part of it. PII has been one of my most worrying administrative aspects since the GFC. There is a $10,000 minimum premium, which thankfully I can share with anther adviser who works under my licence. My turnover usually runs about $30,000 a year, but has been significantly impacted by the withdrawal of grandfathered commissions. The low turnover is because I service clients rather than sell products. As matters currently stand, I can’t see individual adviser registration (with a body other than ASIC) replacing the AFSL model any time soon. On the other hand I’m not so sure the AFSL model can survive either.

    I’d like to think that because I’m registered with ASIC I don’t need any other authorisation. By default FASEA, or some future offshoot of it, now replaces multiple alternative code-monitoring bodies. AFCA takes care of complaints. The final piece of the regulatory puzzle that’s missing is the group professional indemnity offering. That would leave me with annual fees to ASIC for remaining registered, annual fees to a code-monitoring body, annual fees to AFCA for belonging to a complaints body, and annual PII premiums. That’s enough to be going on with, so long as all the fees are set at a level that would allow me to continue to provide sound advice and good service to my clients. At present, those fees plus belonging to professional bodies, plus training, are leaving me with nothing for my take home pay.

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