With financial advisers precluded from doing on-site office work for the duration of Victoria’s Level 4 COVID-19 pandemic, the Government and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) are under renewed pressure to provide more flexibility around client opt-in.
The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) has confirmed that it is continuing to press for the flexibility from the regulator but AFA general manager, policy and professionalism, Phil Anderson said that it would be incumbent on some licensees to also allow flexibility for their authorised representatives.
Financial advisers in Melbourne learned yesterday that they, alongside accounting services, were amongst those the Government had deemed non-essential and therefore precluded from attending their offices.
For some, this has an impact on how they interact with their clients including around client opt-in renewals which are deemed necessarily to be signed and in written form.
While financial advice and accountancy services are impacted, retail banking will continue largely as normal and the Victorian Government’s announcement not as an exemption banking services to support those who could not access those services online. There was no suggestion this exemption could be extrapolated to financial advice.
Anderson said that while he believed that most financial advisers would be well-used to working from home and dealing with clients by e-mail, internet conferencing or over the phone, he believed regulatory accommodations would need to be made.
Those included formal recognition of e-mail and text messaging with respect to opt-in and perhaps even recorded phone acknowledgement, where absolutely necessary.
“We are certainly continuing to press for the challenges to be recognised and acknowledged and accommodations put in place,” he said.
