Jones forecasts QAR position by June
Minister for financial services, Stephen Jones, has blamed the federal budget for the delays to the Quality of Advice Review but said he is expectant of a position by June.
Speaking in an interview this morning (11 May) with Financial Services Council (FSC) chief executive, Blake Briggs, Jones was asked about the QAR review.
The final proposals had been released by Michelle Levy in mid-February but no formal response had yet been given by Jones on the matter. However, he had broached the topic at a number of adviser roadshows over the past few months and rejected the idea that his reticence was part of an "agenda".
His response, he said, would reflect the size of the issues affecting the industry.
"If we didn’t have a budget in May, that would have been out in the field now. We will have a cabinet consideration in a few weeks time. I hope to be in a position in late May or early June.”
He also discussed the possible implementation of the review and how it could be implemented gradually. Members of the Joint Association Working Group had previously written an open letter calling for certain aspects to be implemented quickly to prevent further problems with affordability and accessibility.
“In acknowledging the Government’s commitment to resolving this issue for the good of all consumers, the JAWG supports the review recommendations being implemented in stages, rather than as a holistic package. This will ensure immediate gains can be made, including substantially reducing the cost of accessing financial advice.
“These short-term reforms have the collective potential to reduce the cost of advice, making advice more scalable and more accessible.”
In response, Jones told Briggs that the QAR could be implemented in three stages. These would cover what could be implemented immediately, what was ‘controversial but still difficult to implement” and those which were most difficult and come last in the process.
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Laura Dew
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The Labor Party should just change their name to The Blame Party since that's all they seem to do.
Lets take an educated guess at what they will do. They will allow vertically integrated companies and their sales staff who have no qualifications other than a 3 day sales training course to give financial advice which is limited to pushing their own companies products without the need to prepare a SOA or, more importantly, act in the best interests of clients, so long as the commissions these sales staff recieve are not called commissions but are instead called bonuses. To make sure that the "advice" is cost effective they will not require these sales staff to have any educational requirements, ongoing training or CPD points.
The outcome will be a return to big vertically integrated companies pushing customers into poorly performing financial products which are cheap to access as there are no consumer protections and in 10 years time we will have another Royal Commission into banks which will again not really even look at any bank practices and Financial Advisers (who are the only ones who ever acted in clients' best interest in the first place) will get blamed for the whole mess and this process will start all over again.
THE KING IS DEAD!!!!! Long live industry superannuation funds and the "advice" business formerly known as IOOF.
Statements of Advice (SoA) instead of being 40 pages will become 39 pages. They'll be Statements of Evidence (SoE), in order to comply with the 11-12 other regulatory bodies. Labor governments don't get rid of regulatory bodies and don't do anything to reduce their reliance on them. They'd prefer we all work in the factory comrades selling super funds. 50% of Australians already do work in the Public Service or in a business providing services to the Public Service. Second. as Michelle Levy has stated, Fee Consent reform is a good idea, but in practice it will be too hard for super funds to implement and come to a standard process so won't get across the line. That leaves the only reform being Super funds having the ability to SELL more Super funds and if you think that's a good idea for Australians you're an idiot. People who support QAR are clowns.
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