FSC no longer seeking FOFA change
The Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) changes are no longer being opposed by the Financial Services Council (FSC) which has formally declared to a Parliamentary Committee that it now wants FOFA to be given time to work.
The FSC may have four years ago been one of the most vocal critics of the FOFA changes but its senior representatives have confirmed to the Senate Economics Committee that the organisation was no longer calling for the winding back of FOFA and that it supported FOFA as it was.
The FSC also confirmed it was no longer seeking changes to the best interests’ duty, fee disclosure statements, or opt-in.
Asked why the FSC had changed its position, FSC senior policy adviser, Bianca Richardson said that the organisation believed it was “very important for the reforms to be given time to work”.
“Significant reforms have been brought in, with a number of conduct and disclosure obligations. We think, like with any significant reform, it is important for those reforms to be bedded down and to see if they are effective in achieving what they were designed to do,” she said.
Her fellow senior policy adviser, Blake Briggs said that while the FSC continued to have concerns about how the FOFA changes would work in practice, the organisation was prepared to wait and see whether the new regime was working as it was intended to and whether the previous concerns of the industry would be borne out in practice.
Asked by the committee chairman, Queensland Labor Senator, Chris Ketter, what had changed between 2014 and 2017, Briggs said that while some of the concerns which had existed at the time of the FOFA debate still existed, the FSC was not advocating for change to the regime “because we are prepared to see whether or not it achieves its objectives or whether or not those concerns come to the truth”.
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