\u201cOur members fear this could be winding the clock back five years on our profession,” she says.<\/p>\n
“It appears to invalidate the hard work and pain that has been involved in creating financial advice as a profession and winning the trust of consumers.\u201d (see: Insurers Welcome Financial Advice Reform Package<\/a>).<\/p>\n Abood says that specifically, the Minister has announced that \u201c…any financial institution will be able to provide personal financial advice to consumers, using people who are not financial advisers \u2013 yet who would be called ‘qualified advisers’.\u201d<\/p>\n She says there is no detail on the qualifications that would be required \u201c\u2026however, they would be substantially less than what is currently required to provide financial advice.<\/p>\n “Thus, the proposed term is self-contradictory and extremely likely to confuse consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n The FAAA says there are some positives in the announcement which it acknowledges and supports, saying:<\/p>\n The FAAA notes that some of these changes were suggested in the final report of the Quality of Advice Review.<\/p>\n “We supported, in principle, the government\u2019s initial response, which suggested a cautious approach, testing the more contentious changes such as the introduction of non-relevant providers to the advice space with super funds initially.<\/p>\n “There was a limited scope to the type of advice that could be provided and collectively charged because of the Sole Purpose Test. And these people could become, over time, the next generation of financial advisers and planners.\u201d<\/p>\n …these \u2018qualified advisers\u2019 will provide something that passes for advice for free…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n However, the association says that in this latest proposal \u201c\u2026these \u2018qualified advisers\u2019 will provide something that passes for advice for free, confusing clients and obscuring the important differences between information from a partly-trained salesperson, and comprehensive financial advice from a fully qualified professional.\u201d<\/p>\n It says: \u201cWe created financial advice as a profession, but the government tied it up in so much red tape that the cost of proper financial advice is through the roof.<\/p>\n “We have separately responded more fully to the draft legislation on the stream one changes, but in summary we believe that legislation as drafted will have very little impact on reducing unnecessary processes, paperwork and compliance steps.”<\/p>\n The FAAA continues “…rather than fixing the red tape to get consumer costs down, the government appears to be handing back to institutions the right to hire minimally qualified salespeople, who call themselves qualified advisers, to sell their products to consumers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will have plenty more to say on this in the days and weeks to come. In the meantime, we will be engaging members to ensure the final legislation delivers on the intent and goals of the review, to help consumers get the high-quality financial advice they need.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The FAAA is “deeply concerned” about the latest Government advice reform announcements, saying the response could wind the clock back five years. In noting that Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones has announced his response to the remaining streams of the Quality of Advice Review recommendations, Sarah Abood, CEO of the FAAA, says in a statement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":69043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282,8,8282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-associations","category-compliance-regulation","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69031","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=69031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/files\/2021\/12\/Sarah-Abood-v2-e1639004204902.jpg\")
<\/a>\n