‘Unprecedented’ Industry Collaboration Produces DDO Templates

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In an “unprecedented collaborative project across financial services in Australia”, the FSC and more than 60 of its members have designed products to enable the aligned implementation of the new mandatory Design and Distribution Obligations regime.

A statement from the council says the Design and Distribution Obligations regime starts in October 2021 “and will be a major change to the way the financial services industry designs products and works together to distribute products to consumers” (see: Industry Working Together on DDO).

Sally Loane…Our templates and standards should make life much easier for product issuers, platforms and financial advisers…

It says that for the past 18 months, the FSC and members across life insurance, funds management and superannuation have worked to develop two products to help industry with the implementation of DDO:

  • Templates for Target Market Determinations (TMDs)
  • Industry data standards

The FSC has also made the templates available under license to non-FSC members and to date more than 200 non-member companies have utilised the templates and data standards.

FSC CEO Sally Loane says that 18 months ago they started on “this time-critical piece of work” designing target market determination templates and data standards for super funds, platforms and wraps, life insurers and fund managers, to help financial services firms prepare for the DDO regime on October 5.

“Our templates and standards should make life much easier for product issuers, platforms and financial advisers who would otherwise face confusing and inconsistent compliance requirements,” she says.

…Without this alignment, advisers in particular will be faced with having to comply with dozens of different templates…

“Without this alignment, advisers in particular will be faced with having to comply with dozens of different templates. That would be simply unworkable,” she says.

Loane adds that members and the FSC team “have devoted thousands of hours to a project which will assist the entire sector and consumers. This is corporate social responsibility writ large, and in tangible form”.

She notes that the fact so many firms are using the templates indicates the importance the businesses put on reducing costs while meeting their DDO requirements.

The statement says that the FSC has also developed data standards for all the key information that needs to be shared between product issuers and distributors, such as data on complaints and sales outside target market.

The templates that are now in version 1.0 are:

  • Life insurance
  • Income protection insurance
  • Trauma insurance
  • TPD insurance
  • Superannuation master trusts (choice products)
  • Superannuation wraps
  • Funds management (covering ETPs and LICs)
  • Managed accounts (jointly developed with the Institute of Manager Account Professionals)

The templates and data standards are voluntary for industry participants.

Click here for more information on the reforms and the FSC’s template TMDs and data standards.



1 COMMENT

  1. “unprecedented”?I would have thought the FSC have been collaborating against advisers for years now

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