The Federal Treasury has acted correctly in excluding financial advice from the legislation delivering the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) product intervention powers, according to the Financial Planning Association (FPA).
In a submission filed with the Treasury this week, the FPA has congratulated the Treasury for providing an exclusion for financial advice within the legislation exposure draft for the Treasury Laws Amendment (Design and Distribution Obligations and Product Intervention Powers) Bill 2018.
The legislation is intended to give ASIC greater powers with respect to product design and intervention, and the financial planning industry has been keen to ensure that the delivery of financial advice did not become entangled in the processes.
The FPA said that personal advice was already sufficiently regulated and did not need to be caught up in the proposed new arrangements.
“As we have stated previously, personal advice is already regulated to ensure the adviser acts in the best interests of the particular client,” the submission said. “There is no benefit, and potentially a detriment, in also applying the design and distribution obligations to personal advice.”
