Legislation

April may well be remembered as the beginning of the next phase of financial advice in Australia. While the establishment of FASEA may have had far reaching implications, a triumvirate of news this week is set to shape the way advice is delivered and advisers are regulated for decades to come. Leading the headlines was…

Towards the end of last year, ASIC began preparations to request relevant documentation from major dealer groups around life insurance advice. This year is a vital year for the life insurance industry because it’s when ASIC will review the Life Insurance Framework (LIF). The Federal Government had organised to this review back in 2017/18, when…

The corporate regulator, ASIC, has continued its busy start to the year, releasing three legislative instruments this week stemming from the recommendations from the Hayne Royal Commission. The subject of these latest releases, which will guide ASIC’s assessment of financial service providers, relates to the ‘written consent’ required for advisers to deduct fees from client…

The financial services regulator ASIC has ramped-up its legislative activity in 2021, following a 2020 dominated by pandemic support and leniency. Commenting to media in recent weeks, ASIC’s deputy chair Karen Chester flagged recent proceedings lodged against industry funds Rest Super and Statewide Super as just the beginning. She flagged a “now-mature pipeline of non-Royal…

This week the nation’s financial advisers received news that their annual registration fees, or “adviser levies.” would increase by the equivalent of 160% over the next two years. According to the regulator’s announcement, the total cost per retail advice licence is now $1,500 plus an additional $2,426 per authorised representative under the licence. This means…

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) was established in 1 November 2018, combining the Financial Ombudsman Service, Credit and Investments Ombudsman (CIO) and Superannuation Complains Tribunal (SCT) into a more efficient and well resourced group. Covering most aspects of the financial services industry, the data was naturally tilted towards complaints against the banking sector and…

The Financial Sector Reform Bill (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill finally passed both houses of Parliament on Friday, as the professional standards expected of the financial advice industry continue to increase. The bill includes three significant changes for the industry, each aimed at protecting clients against the “fees for no service” debacle that…

People talk about the importance of taking the time to build a platform for any endeavour. If that’s the case for developing a commercial mass-market range of retirement solutions, Allianz and PIMCO have given themselves a head start with their platform – Allianz Retire+. Starting in 2015 in PIMCO’s Sydney office, the notion of putting…

The issue of retirement income has arguably become far too politicised in recent years, with rational debate seemingly scarce. While the focus inevitably falls on the political football that is superannuation, the Age Pension doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The federal government’s retirement income review, released late last year, showed that the pension will…

It may be a lull between storms but the SMSF Association has no major political battle to contend with at the moment, instead focusing on smaller issues to do with regulatory change and embarking on new research about small funds’ performance in case that becomes an issue in future. John Maroney, the association’s chief executive,…

The recently announced Your Future, Your Super proposed performance test has raised concerns on the potential of unintended consequences in the government’s pursuit of better performing funds. Clearly, the government is squarely focused on the relationship of fees and performance against a standard asset allocation framework. However, many pundits believe the current proposal would see…

The beginning of 2020 has been dominated by headlines of mass adviser departures from the industry, with the number of registered advisers having fallen to levels of five years ago. While this may make for great headlines, it says little about the progress being made in the professionalisation of the financial advice industry, particularly in…