Is Choice guilty of fees hypocrisy?

One of the harshest critics of commissions and asset-based fees, the consumer group, Choice, may be engaging in similar conduct via its endorsement of and relationship with One Big Switch.

That is the concern of Eureka Financial Group managing director Greg Cook, who said that while he believed the One Big Switch concept was novel and welcome, if it resulted in consumers getting better value from their mortgagee it raised key questions for Choice.

He said that, as he understood it, Choice had not just promoted and endorsed One Big Switch, they had “partnered” with them – something which, while not publicly disclosed, “indicates some kind of financial relationship”.

“If that’s so, let me be the first to welcome Choice to the financial services industry,” Cook said.

However he said his concern was not so much any perceptions of conflict of interest, but what might emerge as a “gob-smacking conflict in policy position”.

Cook claimed that as well as being opaque rather than transparent, the relationship appeared to be at “complete odds with the decade-long position of Choice in financial services policy”.

“Choice’s Christopher Zinn and the industry super cohort decry commission payments, fees calculated as a percentage, trail commissions, and any volume rebates,” Cook said. “However on the face of it, here there seems to be a cocktail of all these, but not only that, in the more dangerous area of mortgage and investment lending.”

“If this is the case, it is amazing how easily their firm principles wilt when it comes to actually implementing a business model,” he said. “On that basis, I now wonder, will Choice follow the financial planning profession and bring their remuneration policy into the 21st century?”