Licensees are being urged by the corporate regulator to make sure advisers who are qualified to give tax (financial) advice services have the correct details in the ASIC Financial Adviser Register.
In an update on Friday morning, the regulator said if it is not notified whether a financial adviser can provide tax (financial) advice services by 1 February 2023, the FAR will not display whether the adviser can provide tax (financial) advice services, including on the MoneySmart website.
Additionally, the corporate regulator noted AFSLs have the responsibility to ensure adviser details uploaded onto the FAR are correct.
“If this information isn’t already recorded on the FAR, Australian Financial Services (AFS) licensees should notify ASIC before 1 February 2023 whether their financial advisers can provide tax (financial) advice services,” ASIC said.
“This can be done by updating a financial adviser’s details using the ‘maintain’ function on ASIC Connect. There is no cost to notify ASIC of these details for the first time.”
New rules
Since the start of last year, advisers who provide tax (financial) advice services have to meet new requirements, including the completion of specified courses in commercial law and taxation law.
These rules are set out in the in Corporations (Relevant Providers—Education and Training Standards) Determination 2021.
Financial advisers who meet the requirements are known as Qualified Tax Relevant Providers (QTRPs).
Financial advisers who were registered with the Tax Practitioners Board as individual tax (financial) advisers at the relevant time are taken to be QTRPs “on an indefinite basis”, ASIC said.
ASIC has written to each of these advisers and their respective AFSLs notifying them of their QTRP status.
Separate rules
ASIC noted the requirements with respect to QTRPs are separate to those which require financial advisers to be registered with ASIC by 1 July 2023.
That deadline was delayed by six months – originally meant to take place at the start of the calendar year but instead pushed back to 1 July.
Registration was meant to occur in two stages with the first stage being a one-off registration process administered by ASIC utilising the FAR while the second stage would commence once the FAR transitions to the ATO as part of the Australian Business Registry Service.
The FAR is the register of people who provide personal advice on investments, superannuation and life insurance. Australians can use it to find out where an adviser has worked, their qualifications and if they received any disciplinary actions.
After a reduction of over 12,000 advisers since the Hayne Royal Commission, the number of advisers on the FAR at the end of 2022 was 15,865.
