Dante De Gori: In the midst of change: FPA keynote, Q&A

Professional Planner’s Best Practice Forum event partner, the Financial Planning Association, will deliver a keynote and take on notice the challenges of representing different stakeholders in a fragmented market.

SPEAKERS
Dante De Gori, chief executive, Financial Planning Association
Moderator: Matthew Smith, director, retail content, Conexus Financial

Key Takeaways

• The government’s plan to use a statutory single disciplinary body to monitor advisers’ adherence to the Code of Ethics needs to be efficient and take on some of the similar tasks performed by ASIC, APRA and the TPB, says FPA CEO Dante De Gori
• The SDB should supply a “single source of truth” and actually reduce red tape and costs, thus decreasing the compliance burden on advisers, De Gori believes.
• In October last year De Gori said the FPA was left “disappointed” by the government’s backflip on the monitoring of advisers when Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced that the Code Monitoring Body solution was to be replaced by a statutory SDB, as per the suggestion of Commissioner Kenneth Hayne.
• De Gori called out FASEA for its lack of communication with advisers, saying tit failed to take advisers with them on the journey. “You want financial planners to come with the process, to want to lift standards because it’s the right thing to do, not begrudgingly,” he said.
• He also reiterated the association’s preference for individual adviser registration by lambasting the current AFSL system. “I think many licensees would agree; if you were to start this regime today, would you have licensing in place? I’d be very surprised if more than one or two per cent agree,” he said.