Ensuring that the best financial planning practices not only survive the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms but thrive in the new environment and enjoy long-term stability is a key challenge for licensees.
This is the view of Securitor managing director Matt Englund who said the fortunes of quality practices, especially in the first 12 months of implementation after the July 1 start, would be crucial.
“In a post-July 1 world, how do we make sure that both the letter of the law and the intent of the law are adhered to by all of our practices?” he asked.
“Practices that we have today and also practices that might look to join a group like ours in the future.”
Englund says all dealer groups should be considering whether the services they provide are the right services for the right practices.
“We focus very much on the business owner and we have business owners at different stages of transition,” he said.
“We believe we are in a good place with all of our advice businesses but there is work still to be done. Many of our practice are still on the journey of making sure they can very clearly deliver their FDS obligations from July 1 to July 31 and then for the first quarter.”
Englund says this is probably consistent across the industry more broadly, where the rules and obligations of FoFA are clearly understood at the intent level but with the practical application a work in progress.
“Whether or not practices get 100 per cent of the business ready on day one is not really the issue, it’s about the clients who have obligations that need to be met on July 1,” he said.
“I am convinced that every single one of the practices we work with are doing everything they can to meet not just the letter of the law but the intent of the law.
“ASIC recognizes that this transition period will have some teething errors in it and they have been very clear that they are looking at people doing the right thing at both licensee and adviser level.”
