Industry association heads have voiced concern over Treasury’s ability to conduct a thorough and effective advice review, citing a lack of expertise and ground level experience in the sector as particular areas of concern.
Prompted by a question from the audience at the SMSF Association’s National Conference Thursday, chief executive John Maroney asked panel members how much faith the industry has in Treasury to conduct a truly effective Quality of Advice Review later this year.
Institute of Public Accountants executive general manager Vicki Stylianou gave a candid assessment of the government’s economic think tank.
“Definitely there’s been a concern for a long time that there’s been a hollowing out of expertise in Treasury in particular, and it’s been ongoing,” Stylianou said. “There are a lot of super intelligent people but… not particularly experienced in what really goes on out there.”
Stylianou was employed as a senior policy adviser at Treasury for five years between 2002 and 2007. The lawyer said a lack of relevant industry experience was an “ongoing governance issue” at the department.
“Even with the political advisers… I won’t say what I call them but you’ve seen them go from super-experienced people to really, really junior people who really have… I don’t want to be derogatory or anything but they really have no idea of what’s going on.”
Treasury is “captive to stakeholder advisers”, Stylianou continued, which may not encourage a robust advice review but does provide a silver lining to an advice industry keen to get involved in the review’s process. “There’s an opportunity to fill that void,” she said. “There’s a real opportunity to influence outcomes.”
Also on the panel, Association of Financial Advisers CEO Phil Anderson took a more circumspect stance on Treasury’s readiness for the review.
“Whether they do or they don’t [have the requisite knowledge and experience], they’ve started a process we can’t control,” Anderson said. “All we can do is influence, through the process, access to the knowledge, the advice, the guidance and the insight. And we can encourage them as much as possible to get down into the weeds of the advice process.”
Fundamental process re-engineering
Asked what they hoped for out of the review, which will deliver its findings in December, Financial Planning Association chair Marisa Broome said it was time for advice professionals to be treated as such – without the “too prescriptive” regulatory overhang.
“I really hope the outcome we get is that professionals get treated like professionals,” Broome said, noting that the industry had developed significantly in recent years.
“We now have the framework for advisers to be treated as a profession. We’ve got education, we’ve got ethics… we’ve got the framework for a profession,” she argued. “Professionals should be able to use their professional judgement and not have this over-regulated, overcomplicated system.”
Anderson cited the need to reduce unnecessary complexity and the cost to serve, but also to find ways to improve data flow in the advice ecosystem. “Why can’t we better access data like what’s in myGov or what’s in the ATO portal?” Anderson asked. “That can significantly reduce the process of the fact find exercise.”
While calling for a “fundamental process re-engineering exercise”, the CEO also expressed concern that the review’s focus on increasing advice access to a broader slate of consumers might come at the expense of existing advice clients.
“What we think is really important is listening to existing clients,” he said. “We’ve had too much focus on what the unadvised might potentially want in the future, but it has to be driven by what real clients are experiencing now.”
Inexperience in all Industry is an issue and the common theme is that experience is not treated with respect.
What we have across Australia, is a plethora of armchair experts who look down upon practical knowledge and decades of ACTUAL, hands on experience as something akin to some disease that needs to be quarantined.
In 34 years as an Adviser, I have had the pleasure of working with most Industries and ALL of them say things are out of control with over regulation, red tape, road blocks to running a profitable Business and the vast majority of Business owners are sick to death of it all and are no longer looking to grow, as it has become way to hard.
This is an indictment on all Australian policy setters, as they do not realise the damage they are causing, by making it a disincentive for small, medium and large Businesses in the private sector to continue or grow.
When theory becomes the dominant determination of how Business should be run and hands on experience becomes the poor second cousin that should be seen occasionally, though not heard, we as a Country are in big trouble and that is the path we are on.
When every Business person is saying they are being bogged down with many enforced requirements that many are not a benefit to the end consumer, rather an added cost that the consumer will end up paying, then what have we achieved?
Treasury having lost experienced people, is an epidemic that has hit all Australia and it all comes back to theory based and vested interest groups who have their own agenda and it appears, are winning at all our cost.
In terms of the lack of Treasury experience, Jordan George is a Director there and has been assigned to the QOFA Review secretariat. Surely over seven years in policy and research at the SMSF Association counts for something.