Call for national financial planning disciplinary committee

A single national financial planning disciplinary committee should be established to replace the disparate committees of the industry associations, according to Anthony Virtue, managing director of Sydney advice firm Virtue & Partners.

Establishing a national disciplinary committee, in conjunction with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, would do a “better job of instilling the collective self discipline necessary to avoid the excesses of the industry”, he said.

“At the moment each of the industry associations has their own disciplinary committee, but they can only influence their own members, which effectively allows people to hide any previous disciplinary measures from the broader industry.

“For example, whereas Storm Financial was a corporate member of the Financial Planning Association, the individual Storm members were not — so they couldn’t have any penalties imposed on them."

Virtue foresees the disciplinary committee being established as part of a national registration board of all financial planners, which has already been proposed by various associations to the Ripoll inquiry.

A national disciplinary committee, before which it would be mandatory for planners to appear, would enable all of the industry to see if any planners have been struck off or done something wrong, he said.

“So if you want to go from dealer group A to B, then your history is on the national register for all to see —whereas at the moment we don’t have that.

“As a licensee, I can put someone on as an authorised rep and the regulator will not know their history, allowing these people to jump from situation to situation to situation.”