AFA welcomes positive message from Jones

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) has signalled the minister for financial services, Stephen Jones, is very willing to help fix the financial advice industry.

AFA chief executive, Phil Anderson, said he had met with the new minister, who took over from Jane Hume after the election, and that he was positive about the response.

In discussion with AFA president, Sam Perera, Anderson said: “We’re positive about the messages we got from him. In particular, he remains committed to addressing the issue of the education standard and will deal with that as a priority. He’s also committed to the Quality of Advice Review.

“Not only is he committed to dealing with that review, he is also very willing to look at other opportunities to fix the mess in the financial advice space.

“There are quite positive signs coming out of that office.”

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Last week, Jones made a statement that he was committed to ensuring Australians had access to high-quality and affordable financial advice.

The AFA had made its own submission to the Review as well as contributing to a joint submission with other financial services organisations.

Its priorities included:

• The regulatory obligations for the provision of financial advice should be proportionate to the level of complexity and risk of client detriment;
• Achievement of regulatory certainty to better enable the provision of limited scope advice, including in terms of the requirements for the fact find process;
• Increased regulatory certainty on the obligations with respect to demonstration of compliance with the Best Interest Duty;
• Removal of the Best Interests Duty safe harbour and ability to demonstrate professional judgement or repeal of the “other steps” obligation and the ASIC record keeping class order;