The Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) National Conference 2011 tackled the big issues while also taking the time to acknowledge the next generation of financial planners.
FPA chief executive Mark Rantall
FPA Certified Financial Planner Professional Practice Award winner Pippa Elliot, of Momentum Planning (WA)
FPA Associate Financial Planner Best Practice Award joint winner Jim Fenwicke, of Fenwicke Financial Services (NSW)
The Industry Super Network (ISN) claimed for years that their policies would disaggregate product and advice. However the Opt-In policy is clearly damaging to independent adviser businesses, will have little or no impact on bank or fund advisers, and is already leading to the net aggregation of product and advice. Put another way the Opt-In policy discourages ongoing adviser relationships, but encourages transactional advice, which means it encourages transactional product pushing advice by product groups. If the FPA had debated on these points and pointed out this contradiction in the ISN position, then this Opt-In policy could have been avoided. Instead the FPA got wedged into a pointless debate about the dollar cost of the Opt-In correspondence.