The notion that consumers shouldn’t be forced to pay for an ongoing advice service if they don’t want it seems logical and yet it has been one of the fiercest battlegrounds in the debate around the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms.
For the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s Peter Kell the equation is simple: a more engaged client is a client in it for the long haul.
“The financial relationship that clients have with an adviser can stretch over many years,” he said. “One of the aims of opt in is to ensure that clients get good, ongoing service and that they’re engaged over a long period of time.”
In the video below, ASIC Commissioner Kell, the Financial Planning Association’s Dante De Gori and Peter O’Toole, principal wealth adviser and director of Portfolio and Wealth Management, discuss the evolution of the opt in debate and some practical ways to approach the provision.
Professional Planner and the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) have produced a series of videos on “Bulletproof financial planning” – a financial planner’s guide to complying with the new FoFA rules, and how adhering to the FPA’s code of professional practice can help negotiate a potential minefield.
In part four we look at opt in options and how existing ongoing service contacts can be amended to comply with the changes.
To watch Bulletproof Financial Planning (Part 1) – Best Interests, click here.
To watch Bulletproof Financial Planning (Part 2) – Scaled Advice, click here.
To watch Bulletproof Financial Planning (Part 3) – Conflicted Remuneration, click here.
The general aversion to ‘opt-in’ is because it is completely unnecessary and just creates more admin, increases costs, increases red tape. Typical of all the ‘innovation’ thrust upon us by the current Labor Government.
Who ends up paying for all the changes? The consumer that the Government is supposedly trying to protect!
A client can walk any time they want to if they are not happy.
Opt-in is just absolutely stupid legislation that will achieve nothing, hence why it has been a fierce battleground of debate.