{"id":33941,"date":"2016-07-21T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T23:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=33941"},"modified":"2026-07-15T14:59:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T04:59:26","slug":"call-for-tighter-controls-on-advisers-and-licensees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2016\/07\/21\/call-for-tighter-controls-on-advisers-and-licensees\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for Tighter Controls on Advisers and Licensees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stricter controls over the movements of advisers who have breaches against them should be introduced, according to the head of a life insurer, who also called for restrictions on the issuing of financial services licences to improve the sector.<\/p>\n

ClearView, Managing Director, Simon Swanson<\/strong> stated that all financial advisers should be members of a professional association and in the event they were in breach of an association\u2019s code of ethics they should be barred from providing advice as well as being unable to move to another association or licensee.<\/p>\n

Swanson made the comments as part of a panel session at the recent Financial Services Council Leaders\u2019 Summit in Melbourne\u00a0during which he also called for the creation of a professional body that represented licensees and enforced their compliance with appropriate regulations.<\/p>\n

\"ClearView<\/a>
ClearView MD, Simon Swanson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAt the AFSL level, there should be a professional body that represents the interests of licensees but also ensures they are profitable; comply with ethical standards; effectively audit and monitor their advisers; and continuously support them by providing education and training, and valuable practice management tools,\u201d Swanson said.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he rejected the development of \u201ccut price \u2018licensees for hire\u2019\u201d and called for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to make gaining an AFSL more difficult, stating many advisers were using the low barrier to entry to avoid being removed from the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is too common in financial services that a poor adviser fails a dealer group audit, fails to clean up their act and ultimately gets kicked out of the group only to pop up at another licensee or gain their own AFSL. There is effectively nothing stopping a rogue adviser from applying for an AFSL,\u201d Swanson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe AFSL application process largely involves filling out a form, choosing responsible managers, agreeing to meet a number of obligations and paying a nominal application fee,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The comments were made within a wider context of how the financial services sector could assist ASIC in its regulatory duties to create better outcome for the industry and consumers.<\/p>\n

Swanson called on the regulator \u201c\u2026to engage with licensees and dealer heads who are at the coalface of advice, not executives and heads of distribution at the institutional level\u201d.<\/p>\n

ASIC faces an uphill battle trying to regulate an industry desperately clinging to the old world…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He added that financial services needed to become better at self-regulation but this would require moving away from maintaining legacy systems, processes and business models \u2013 including vertical integration, shelf space fees and the acquisition of advice businesses as distribution channels \u2013 which have created many of the industry\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cA trademark of every financial services inquiry has been organisations with vested interests lobbying and fighting to maintain the status quo, even though the status quo is the root cause of the industry\u2019s woes,\u201d Swanson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cASIC faces an uphill battle trying to regulate an industry desperately clinging to the old world and only prepared to change when slapped with an enforceable undertaking or legislative reform,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stricter controls over the movements of advisers who have breaches against them should be introduced, according to the head of a life insurer, who also called for restrictions on the issuing of financial services licences to improve the sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,241,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-compliance-regulation","category-conferences-and-events","category-dealer-groups","headers-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83194,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33941\/revisions\/83194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}