The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC’s) review on life insurance advice aims to see whether there has been an improvement in advice in 2021 from 2017 and is not out to catch people out.
Speaking at the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) conference, ASIC senior executive leader, financial advisers, Kate Metz said for both time periods the regulator was conducting “a random and representative sample of advice”.
“We are not targeting poor advice – it is completely random,” she said.
Metz said the regulator had served noticed on 130 licensees for files from 2017. It usually asked for one or two files, and where the licensees were larger they might ask for more.
“We’re not looking to catch anyone out. We’re looking to see whether advice provided complied with best interest duty and related obligations and what position consumers were placed in as a result of getting the advice,” she said.
“That’s where we are up to. We’re currently undertaking those advice reviews, in 2021 we will be doing the same process again.”
Metz stressed that the regulator would unlikely be taking any follow up enforcement action as a result of the review.
“We’re just looking at one or two files per adviser who has been selected. If we saw things that we were really concerned about we’d do a deeper dive and look at more examples of advice from that adviser. We’re not looking to catch people out,” she said.
“When we do these reviews we look at the complete client file so just because something isn’t in an statement of advice doesn’t mean we think it doesn’t comply with best interest duty – we look at the entire file.”
