The Association of Independently Owned Financial Planners (AIOFP) has continued its campaign to have the details of the tri-party Life Insurance Framework (LIF) proposal released claiming it was locked out of negotiations on the matter.
Responding to statements made by the Financial Planning Association (FPA) yesterday AIOFP executive director Peter Johnston claimed his group was excluded from discussions between the FPA, Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and Financial Services Council (FSC) on the LIF for wishing to represent advisers ahead of institutions.
“We believe we were locked out of the association negotiations because we would have been there representing the best interests of the advisers not the institutions , something this ‘little exclusive party’ apparently did not want.”
Johnston claimed the AIOFP had not been ‘late to the party’ either and has been monitoring the issue over the past nine months and had met with the Minister (Josh Frydenburg) six months ago to voice its opinion.
Yesterday the FPA responded to prior claims by Johnston that it had not consulted its members by outlining the process it had undertaken with it members, its intended aims and goals for the LIF and questioning why the AIOFP had not been present at industry discussions.
Johnston said there was no dispute around the FPA’s process and that its goals of a 60 to 80 per cent upfront commission range, 20 per cent ongoing commission and a two year claw back period accorded closely with the AIOFP’s view.
However he questioned why the final LIF proposal was materially different from the FPA member feedback and called for the FPA, AFA and FSC to reveal the full details of their combined LIF proposal.
“Unless the adviser community can get an original ‘unedited’ version of the Ministerial submission, we can only assume that the three associations ignored the adviser feedback and placed the interests of the Institutions well ahead the advisers,” Johnston said.
He also repeated claims the three groups were under pressure from institutional members “who commercially and politically dominate behind the scenes” or the association were engaged in a ‘good cop-bad cop’ routine to improve their standing with members.
