Nick Sherry
The release of the Financial Services Working Group’s consultation paper on increasing access to simple superannuation advice has been enthusiastically welcomed by the Government and financial services industry.
Titled ‘Simple Advice on Choices within an Existing Superannuation Account,’ the paper seeks comment on regulatory and other measures that could be taken to improve access to low cost financial advice within a person’s super fund.
Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law Nick Sherry said the Government intends to provide basic financial advice to the millions of unsophisticated Australian investors.
The FinancialPlanningAssociation (FPA) chief executive officer Jo-Anne Bloch said red tape along with lengthy disclosures have been making advice more expensive and therefore less accessible to consumers.
“The review will make access to advice easier and less expensive for seven out of 10 Australians who currently don’t seek advice,” she said.
“Many super fund members, for example, have straightforward questions and the regime in place at the moment makes it prohibitively expensive for them to get advice.”
A key issue to be addressed by the working group will be the level of detail in a statement of advice (SOA), or the need to produce an SOA at all.
The working group has called on the industry to provide any factual information about the level of any costs imposed by the SOA requirement on simple intra-fund advice.
The Financial Services Working Group is a joint initiative of the Treasury, the Department of Finance and Deregulation and the AustralianSecuritiesandInvestmentsCommission.
