The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) can play a role in reducing the cost of delivering financial advice by looking at the manner in which it translates legislation into regulation.
That is the assessment of the Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, said he believed ASIC needed to look at its own approach and its own guidance.
He said this was in circumstances where a well-meaning set of regulatory requirements could be translated into an increased burden of financial advisers which the Parliament had never intended to occur.
Jones said he was of the view that advice could be made more affordable if the regulatory arrangements were actually commensurate with the complexity of the advice being delivered.
“The regulatory burden should be in proportion to the risk involved,” he said.
Jones also expressed concerns about vertical integration, including with respect to not for profit funds seeking to deliver financial advice.
He signalled that as industry superannuation funds ventured further into the financial advice arena they would need to be conscious of the problems encountered by the major banks and other vertically-integrated structures.
Jones said it would be naïve to suggest that the same issues which had impacted the banks with respect to advice within vertically-integrated structures would not apply to the not for profit sector.
