The cost of delivering financial advice is clearly not reducing, according to the adviser community.
This is the only conclusion which can be drawn from the result of our latest poll, which has delivered a one-sided result indicating over 90% of advice businesses have failed to experience a reduction in the cost of providing financial advice in the last 12 months.
Advisers in Hobart, Adelaide and Perth have all reinforced this sentiment over the last week, with similarly one-sided results in response to the same question put to those attending the Riskinfocus 25 Risk Advice CPD Tour events in those cities.
It appears that, notwithstanding all the good intentions of institutions, service providers, dealer groups, regulators and Government decision makers, advice businesses are yet to benefit from any initiatives that can assist their bottom line – especially in the realm of life insurance advice.
We can all reflect on what might be the reason for such a result, but the fact remains that while the financial advice community in general and, dare we say it, the life insurance advice community in particular, have danced to the beat of the regulator’s drum for many years now, nothing of any substance has happened that has contributed to reducing the cost to serve.
Where to from here? There are many well-intended initiatives associated with the Government’s Delivering Better Financial Outcomes package of reforms – developed in response to Michelle Levy’s Quality of Advice Review recommendations.
As a reminder to Riskinfo readers, the first tranche of reforms attaching to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering Better Financial Outcomes and Other Measures) Act 2024, intended to simplify rules that add costs without benefiting consumers, became law on 9 July 2024.
It seems the majority of the advice community is still waiting for these measures to take effect in any meaningful way.
Our poll remains open for another week and we welcome your thoughts…
…Meanwhile, the Riskinfocus 25 event series continues in Melbourne on Thursday this week before heading to Brisbane (18th March) and Sydney (20th March) next week.
