A 30-year institutional memory retires from the FAAA as reform workload peaks

Ask anyone who has worked on financial advice reform in Canberra over the past 15 years to name the people who can recall the last reform attempt without checking a file. The same short list of names comes back every time.

Phil Anderson is on that list. On 27 November, that memory leaves the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA).

The FAAA has confirmed the retirement. Anderson, its general manager of policy, advocacy and standards, will finish on 27 November, at the conclusion of the FAAA Congress in Melbourne. That closes more than 30 years in financial services and more than 20 years working on behalf of the advice profession.

A career in reform

Anderson’s employers read like a map of where advice policy gets made. Senior roles at AMP, NAB, Colonial First State and Netwealth came before he joined the Association of Financial Advisers. He spent 13 years across the AFA and the FAAA, capping more than two decades of arguing the profession’s case.

He measures his own tenure in legislation rather than job titles.

“Whilst we have faced a series of challenges along the way, from the FoFA reforms in 2011-12 through to the substantial announcements by the Minister last week, I am proud of what we have achieved together,” Anderson said when the FAAA announced his retirement in August.

The Future of Financial Advice reforms banned conflicted remuneration and wrote the best interests duty into the Corporations Act. They also forced practices to renegotiate how they charged clients.

Everything since has built on that base. The Hayne royal commission, the FASEA education standards, the Quality of Advice Review, and the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes tranches that advisers still work through. Anderson worked every one of them.

The merger

His most durable contribution may be structural rather than legislative. Anderson led the AFA as chief executive through its merger with the Financial Planning Association. That merger produced the FAAA in 2023.

“His leadership as CEO of the AFA was a key element in the successful merger of the AFA and FPA to create the FAAA,” said Sarah Abood, chief executive of the FAAA. Abood also described Anderson as “absolutely tireless in shaping numerous important policy and standards outcomes”.

The merger changed how advice gets represented. Treasury and ministers respond far more readily to a single position than to two associations lodging competing submissions. The FAAA now speaks for the bulk of the practitioner base.

That unity has not solved everything, though. Adviser numbers slipped below 15,000 this year, and Canberra presence alone has not drawn more people into the profession.

A full in-tray

His exit also lands at a pointed moment. Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino set out the government’s response to the Shield and First Guardian collapses in a National Press Club address on 19 August. The resulting package reaches into almost every part of an advice practice.

Under the announced changes, the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort will cover actual investment losses rather than counterfactual gains, for claims lodged with AFCA after 30 June 2027.

A waterfall model applies to the $170.3 million special levy on the advice subsector in 2026-27. Self-managed super funds will contribute to future levies at no more than $20 per fund. A new class of adviser, limited to APRA-regulated super funds and life insurers and barred from commissions, bonuses and volume-based payments, will be reviewed in three years. The class excludes advice licensees and banks.

The best interests duty faces targeted amendment to make scaled advice workable. The anti-hawking exemption narrows to existing client relationships. The law will require trustees to cap advice fee deductions from super accounts.

Each of those lines becomes months of drafting instructions, exposure draft commentary and regulatory guidance. That work lands on whoever replaces him.

Institutional memory

Policy advocacy looks glamorous from the outside and reads like tax law from the inside. Its value shows up in unglamorous places, knowing which Treasury officer owns a file, recognising a recycled clause and explaining why in a paragraph a minister will read.

Education reform consultation is already live. Adviser supply remains the profession’s most pressing structural problem, and a successor with fresh thinking on entry pathways may be better placed to address it.

Anderson said the people were what he would remember most.

“It has been a privilege to work alongside colleagues, members and stakeholders who are passionate about advancing the profession.”

He does not plan to disappear from the profession either.

“Although I will be stepping back from full time work, I am intent on continuing to contribute to the advice profession and ensure that it continues to prosper,” Anderson said.

Institutional memory is the slowest thing to replace and the first to be missed. Anderson built his across three decades of arguments about who advice should serve and what it should cost.

His successor inherits the files. Building the recall to use them well will take years the profession cannot spare, and a retiree contributing in his own time carries less weight than a general manager with the file open. The Congress that closes Anderson’s career in November opens with the whole of the Minister’s package still waiting to be drafted.