ASIC questioned on salaried planner consistency

australian-securities-and-investments-commission/ASIC/financial-planning/fees/industry-super-funds/AustralianSuper/REST/IFAs/administration-fees/superannuation-fees/advice-fees/

12 June 2019
| By Mike |
image
image image
expand image

The question of whether the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is being consistent in its handling of salaried planners employed by industry superannuation funds or their service providers has been raised by a number of financial planners.

In particular, the advisers pointed to the manner in which superannuation fund salaried advisers were being paid out of the fund’s administration fees or investment fees, meaning that all members of the fund were paying for advice whether they had received it or not.

The advisers raised the issue on the back of the latest announcement from ASIC concerning Commonwealth Financial Planning completing its enforceable undertaking relating to fee for no service.

In doing so, they pointed to the latest Financial Services Guides (FSGs) issued by two major industry funds – AustralianSuper and REST – which they said confirmed that financial advice salaries were being paid out of administration fees.

The advisers questioned whether the use of the administration fund to pay the salaried advisers meant that members were paying for advice but not receiving it.

The advisers described the ability of the industry funds to utilise their administration fees to pay salaried planners “discriminatory” and noted that ASIC had previously precluded the payment of external advisers under similar arrangements.

They said they believed the bottom line was that superannuation funds which owned salaried financial planning businesses were benefiting from not having to deal with client ‘opt-in’ or deal with fee disclosure statements because their operating expenses were covered out of the investment fees.austral

Read more about:

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest news and developments in wealth management industry

MARKET INSIGHTS

So we are now underwriting criminal scams?...

5 months ago

Glad to see the back of you Steve. You made financial more expensive, not more affordable as you claim, and presided ...

5 months ago

Completely agree Peter. The definition of 'significant change is circumstances relevant to the scope of the advice' is s...

7 months 1 week ago

The FSCP has issued a written direction to an adviser who charged clients “extraordinary fees” for inappropriate and conflicted advice, as well as encouraged them to swit...

1 week 5 days ago

ASIC has cancelled the AFSL of an advice firm associated with Shield and First Guardian collapses, and permanently banned its responsible manager. ...

3 weeks 1 day ago

ASIC has confirmed the industry funding levy for the 2024–25 financial year, and how much licensees can expect to pay....

2 days 16 hours ago

TOP PERFORMING FUNDS

ACS FIXED INT - AUSTRALIA/GLOBAL BOND
Fund name
3y(%)pa
2
DomaCom DFS Mortgage
95.46 3 y p.a(%)
5