AFA to counter poor perception via grass roots
The new president of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) has flagged ongoing member and consumer engagement as the key to counteracting negative perceptions around financial planning advice.
Deborah Kent was named on Sunday as AFA president for a two year term and said the AFA would not be able to match resources with those groups who were anti-advice.
"It is pretty hard to match resources, how are we going to go up against bigger entities with bigger machines?"
"We can only do what we can do. If just keep getting message out through adviser network and licensee partners is the way we would tackle it.
Kent flagged the AFA's Your Best Interest TV program as a new method of consumer engagement and education alongside a number of other AFA programs aimed at attracting new industry entrants and lifting advice standards
"We are committed to doing what we can to lift to lift confidence in advice with our programs."
"Consumers need to be educated and we understand they need to be educated and the financial literacy piece is something we all need to do across the board, whether that be licensees, product providers in their messaging.
"Understand is there is a low confidence in advice in the market place and what we need to do is lift that and we feel we are on track to do that," Kent said.
"It is not going to be an easy job because we have gone through a lot in the last few years which has reduced consumer confidence."
Kent also stated the AFA would continue of the it's policy of working with other industry bodies and said working together gave a stronger voice on certain issues.
"We don't sit and close the door. We pick up the phone and have a chat and are more than happy to do that," Kent said.
The AFA and FSC are currently co-operating on a life insurance working group in response to the recent ASIC report on that sector, however the Financial Planning Association is not part of that group.
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