Poll Results – Information and Advice

Our latest poll result suggests most advisers agree they should have the same regulatory freedom as that enjoyed by finfluencers when providing simple financial information to consumers.

There’s a big difference between the provision of information and education and the delivery of advice. The value provided to consumers by advisers rests in the personal advice they deliver, while the value provided by finfluencers – as long as they adhere to ASIC’s guidelines – is in delivering information and possibly education.

This division of roles makes sense, but it seems the message advisers are sending is that even for the most simple and basic advice to be provided to a client or prospective client, the authorised representative must navigate their way through what one adviser describes as “…the maze of regulatory restrictions.”

In other words, it’s just too hard for advisers, takes too much time and costs them far too much to structure even a simple advice solution which, with the current ‘maze’ of compliance requirements, is both unaffordable for many Australians and unprofitable for the advice business.

Perhaps the underlying message out of this poll result is that, while accepting that there’s a big difference between the provision information by a finfluencer and the provision of simple financial advice by a qualified adviser, the enormous chasm that exists between the compliance and regulatory controls overseeing the two scenarios is currently so distorted as to effectively price an entire segment of the Australian community out of the ability to receive personal financial advice.

Our poll remains open for another week and we welcome your thoughts…