{"id":48967,"date":"2020-03-10T10:29:31","date_gmt":"2020-03-09T23:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=48967"},"modified":"2020-03-12T21:37:32","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T10:37:32","slug":"afa-calls-for-removal-of-fds-requirement-submission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2020\/03\/10\/afa-calls-for-removal-of-fds-requirement-submission\/","title":{"rendered":"AFA Calls For Removal of FDS Requirement &#8211; Submission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.afa.asn.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">AFA&#8217;s\u00a0<\/a>Royal Commission submission to Treasury recommends removing the Financial Disclosure Statement requirement and rationalising the agreement document, the Opt-In Notice and the Client Consent form.<\/p>\n<p>In its submission on <a href=\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2020\/03\/AFA-Submission-on-Ongoing-Fee-Arrangements-Disc-of-Lack-of-Indep-28-Feb-2020-Final1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ongoing Fee Arrangements and Disclosure of Lack of Independence<\/a> AFA says it recognises the Government&#8217;s desire to implement the Royal Commission recommendation &#8220;however this reform presents an excellent opportunity to address the flaws in the current process and needs to be implemented in a way that avoids additional red tape&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The AFA&#8217;s recommendation summary in its submission reads:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Removal of the FDS requirement. This information is already provided in product statements and the workload to prepare them is excessive and subject to a range of issues, and as such prone to errors<\/li>\n<li>Opt-In should apply to all ongoing fee clients and the Renewal notice should describe the services to be provided and the fees payable in the upcoming year. Any estimate of fees should be based upon the current circumstances (account balance)<\/li>\n<li>The client renewal should be for a 12-month period from a fixed date, not the last renewal date, to achieve a genuine 12-month renewal, however with flexibility for the client to sign anywhere between the 9th and 15th month. Greater flexibility will benefit both clients and financial advisers, while still achieving an annual renewal<\/li>\n<li>Product provider proof of client authorisation is important, however this does not need to be provided on an annual basis. A sensible timeframe is every three to five years. Other automated solutions need to be considered to avoid this additional red tape.<\/li>\n<li>We would like to combine the agreement document, the Opt-In Notice and the Consent form.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The AFA also states that commencement should be deferred until 1 July 2021 and the transition for all clients should be two years, \u201cin order to ensure that advisers have sufficient time to work with each client, particularly during the current demanding period, when they are also dealing with other challenges such as the FASEA exam, education requirements, the FASEA Code of Ethics and the transition of grandfathered commission clients\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis two year period will enable clients to retain their existing review arrangements,\u201d it notes.<\/p>\n<p>In a newsletter providing an update on its submissions AFA notes it is &#8220;particularly concerned that these reforms will make financial advice inaccessible and unaffordable for everyday Australians. We believe there are options to improve the outcomes and to reduce the red tape&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The AFA&#8217;s\u00a0Royal Commission submission to Treasury recommends removing the Financial Disclosure Statement requirement and rationalising the agreement document, the Opt-In Notice and the Client Consent form. In its submission on Ongoing Fee Arrangements and Disclosure of Lack of Independence AFA says it recognises the Government&#8217;s desire to implement the Royal Commission recommendation &#8220;however this reform [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":48979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-compliance-regulation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48967","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}