The Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) bills have been placed on the House of Representatives agenda to be debated today, amid calls by the Financial Planning Association (FPA) and the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) for parliamentarians to appropriately heed the industry’s concerns.
Any hope the financial planning industry now has of extracting changes to the Government’s FOFA approach is reliant upon debate in the House of Representatives and the votes of the key independents Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor, Andrew Wilkie and Bob Katter.
There is also a realisation on the part of the financial planning groups who have been lobbying the independents that while Katter is expected to be in Parliament for some of next week, he may not necessarily be present when key elements of the FOFA bills are discussed.
The attitude of the independents in the House of Representatives became more important yesterday when, as expected, the Senate Economic Committee reviewing the FOFA bills recommended their passage by the Parliament.
The report of the Senate committee was seen as almost a foregone conclusion, with its make-up favouring prosecution of the Government’s agenda.
The level of concern being felt by the industry was yesterday exhibited by Asteron Life general manger for adviser distribution Jordan Hawke, who urged advisers to lobby their local members even harder "for more pragmatic outcomes".
"We’d hoped that common sense would prevail at the highest level of Government. However, the committee reviews of FOFA have not acknowledged the collective concerns of the advice industry," he said.
Hawke said that if FOFA were passed it would hurt advisers’ business and disadvantage the community by preventing more consumers from accessing affordable advice, while encouraging a competitive advantage for one part of the industry over another.
FPA chief executive Mark Rantall made it clear he was disappointed with the report issued by the Senate Economics Committee. He said it had missed an opportunity to recommend improvements to the legislation which would have delivered the benefits originally intended to be achieved by the FOFA changes.
The Opposition has signaled it will be moving a number of amendments broadly reflecting the concerns of the industry, but has acknowledged that the success of these changes will require the support of the independents.
