Industry funds ramp up planning campaign

Just days before the release of the final report of the Ripoll inquiry, the Industry Super Network (ISN) has helped fund and launch a national advertising campaign aimed at pressing its agenda that financial planners be required to act in their clients' best interests.

The industry funds body has been joined in funding the campaign by consumer group Choice, welfare group the Australian Council of Social Services and the peak union body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

The advertising has taken the form of an open letter to members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, which will hand its report to the Government before the end of the week.

Commenting on the move, ISN executive manager David Whiteley claimed there was “a groundswell of support within the Australian community to require financial planners to act in their clients' best interests and to sweep away the conflicts of interest that are prevalent in the financial planning industry”.

Whiteley referred to what he described as “financial planning scandals”, which included the collapse of Storm Financial, and said the Ripoll inquiry had an historic opportunity “to transform the financial planning industry into a genuine profession, akin to the legal or medical profession”.

He said the Parliamentary inquiry needed to be decisive in its recommendations to Parliament and address the conflicts of interest inherent in the financial planning industry.

Earlier, Whiteley and the ISN had dismissed the Investment and Financial Services Association’s superannuation charter, claiming that despite the separation of advice and super, it “does nothing to halt the commissions gravy train”.