When will the QAR progress to Parliament?
Financial advisers could have longer to wait on the Quality of Advice Review changes as it is unlikely to reach Parliament until early next year.
Speaking at a Holley Nethercote compliance event, FAAA general manager for transformation and interim general manager for policy and advocacy , Phil Anderson, said consultation will likely take six months.
The final report from Michelle Levy was issued in February and the government’s formal response was released by Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, in June.
Anderson said: “It will be the early part of next year before we start to see legislation that could end up before Parliament.
“Consultation will likely last six months which brings us into the early part of next year. The conversations we are having now are preliminary and without a document then there will be something in writing as well such as a policy paper. Or they might move rapidly to draft legislation, we will have to see.
“But it won’t be done in the next week.”
The Joint Associations Working Group, of which the FAAA is a member, met with Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, in Canberra in mid-June to work together on the QAR response.
However, he said he hopes this means the government is taking it seriously and considering each future reform and consequences.
“We don’t want it to happen quickly because we want them to get it right. There are some parts where we will have to work hard to get the right outcome,” he said.
“This is a point of crisis, the government knows they need to fix this or otherwise there will be so many Australians who get to retirement and will not receive any form of advice so might pull all their money out of super and put it into the bank.”
The government’s formal response approved 14 of the 22 recommendations put forward by Levy and said it will assess the remaining eight by the end of the year.
The recommendations were broken down into three streams: removing regulatory red tape that adds to the cost of advice without benefiting consumers, expand access to retirement income advice, and exploring new channels to advice.
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
Recommended for you
Two CEOs and a recent report have underscored how the current period of M&A, led by large buyer groups, is redefining the financial advice profession and creating a notable “purple patch”.
The FAAA has argued against “prescriptive record keeping obligations” in favour of advisers using their professional judgement.
Outsourcing company Vital Business Partners has taken a minority equity stake in a digital platform for financial advisers, which will help fund its future growth plans.
The advice profession lost 15 advisers over the past week, according to Wealth Data, partly due to a lower number of new entrants and advisers transitioning between licensees.
It didn't work for the Banks and Super funds when it comes to upselling will be like Banks on steroids. Seems like the Flight Attendants Association has already made their mind up when they joined the Joint working group Advisory panel, being the FSC. Has any member of the FAAA actually been properly asked or surveyed? Financial Advice in this country needs to be delivered by humans, not some large Super fund that can't even answer their own phones in under an hour and half.