Voice of the existing clients important: AFA

11 February 2022
| By Oksana Patron |
image
image image
expand image

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA), which has been supportive of the Quality of Advice Review (QAR), has said it is critically important for the future of industry to hear the voice of existing clients and the impact on them.

The industry body stressed that in recent years Parliament had introduced additional layers of bureaucracy with little consideration of the impact on the existing clients and whether they valued these measures or were willing to pay for them.

AFA highlighted the annual renewal requirement and client consent forms as well as the clients’ lack of flexibility to decide the timing of the renewal of their ongoing fee arrangements.

“This is set by when they first became a client and cannot be changed. The advice process and regulations should support the needs of clients, not make things more difficult for them,” AFA said.

“We believe that this existing client perspective is critical to incorporate in order to make sure advice is affordable and valued by clients.”

Other key themes that required review, according to AFA, should include the balancing of the benefits of each new regulatory requirement as well as the unintended consequences and the necessity to remove all non-value adding steps from the process.

AFA also stressed that adequate consideration of leveraging cross industry standardised systems and processes should be given as most were built on a licensee basis or a specific product provider basis, meaning advisers had to comply with the different systems and processes of each product provider they worked with.

“Classic examples are the client consent form solutions and Design and Distribution Obligation reporting,” AFA said.

The other key areas included regulatory uncertainty, risk-based compliance regime, encouragements for the new entrants as individual licensing.

 

 

 

 

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest news and developments in wealth management industry

MARKET INSIGHTS

So we are now underwriting criminal scams?...

5 months 1 week ago

Glad to see the back of you Steve. You made financial more expensive, not more affordable as you claim, and presided ...

5 months 1 week ago

Completely agree Peter. The definition of 'significant change is circumstances relevant to the scope of the advice' is s...

7 months 2 weeks ago

The RBA has handed down its much-anticipated rate decision, following widespread expectations of a close call....

4 days 2 hours ago

The FSCP has issued a written direction to an adviser who charged clients “extraordinary fees” for inappropriate and conflicted advice, as well as encouraged them to swit...

2 weeks 5 days ago

ASIC has cancelled the AFSL of an advice firm associated with Shield and First Guardian collapses, and permanently banned its responsible manager. ...

4 weeks ago

TOP PERFORMING FUNDS

ACS FIXED INT - AUSTRALIA/GLOBAL BOND
Fund name
3y(%)pa
2
DomaCom DFS Mortgage
95.46 3 y p.a(%)
5