FPA concern on lack of FOFA impact assessment

The Financial Planning Association (FPA) has raised concerns about Treasury's admission that its failure to conduct a regulatory impact analysis on the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms breaches best practice regulations. 

FPA general manager of policy and government relations Dante De Gori placed the issue under the spotlight at the FPA conference in Brisbane.

In evidence to a Senate Estimates Committee hearing last month, Treasury officials admitted they had not done a full regulatory impact analysis on the FOFA bill and that this breached the Federal government's best practice regulations.

The government's Office of Best Practice Regulation had found that changes such as opt-in were not assessed as adequate for the decision-making stage, said shadow Assistant Treasurer Mathias Cormann last month.

Because the true impact to consumers hasn't been measured by Treasury, questions need to be asked about the impact figures that are being quoted and who came up with them, De Gori said.

Since Bowen announced the reforms in April last year, through all the changes in policy, there has been no official modelling into a regulatory impact statement, De Gori said.

De Gori urged delegates to continue to go out and inform their local MPs about the impact FOFA would have on consumers.

At least talking to local MPs will mean they will know what they're voting for when the bills are passed, even if they vote in favour of the legislation, De Gori told delegates.

"Your local MP may not understand what they're voting for; with 235 pieces of legislation [passed by the government] they cannot understand the ins and outs of each of those pieces of legislation and what the impacts are," he said.