The proliferation of professional "hats" an adviser or an accountant has to wear simultaneously when giving advice is going to confuse planners and accountants in the wider advice industry and start to impact their ability to advise clients, according to industry experts.
Speaking at the Money Management SMSF Essentials conference in Melbourne, Peter Fry, principal of chartered accounting and financial planning provider Peter Fry and Associates, said that the need for multiple qualifications in different fields was making it difficult to know which role to adopt when providing advice to a client.
If you were to approach the client as an accountant, are you obliged to say that as an accountant you aren't allowed to provide advice on certain issues, Fry asked.
The same issue occurred vice-versa, he added.
"It is a really blurry state, and it's not clear under all the [Future of Financial Advice] rules," he said.
The Government has not as yet provided an alternative to the accountants' exemption.
The Institute of Public Accountants announced a partnership with AXA and MLC last year to provide its member base with five licensing solutions that would give them the ability to advise clients more broadly on their SMSFs.
Ian Glenister, a director of the SMSF Academy and principal of legal firm Glenister and Co, said the industry was getting to the point where participants had to have multiple qualifications at once, and this would confuse advisers.
"What hat do you know to put on when talking to a client? It gets to the stage that to provide advice, you're going to have to be an accountant who is also a qualified financial planner, licensed to provide insurance advice, and has done a graduate of law as a legal qualification as well," he said.
