There will be at least one empty seat at the Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals conference next week.
ASIC will break with longstanding tradition and decline to speak on the regulators panel at the annual AIOFP conference. Instead, it leaves Australian Financial Complaints Authority lead ombudsman for advice Shail Singh and Compensation Scheme of Last Resort CEO David Berry to appear without the marque regulator.
Professional Planner understands ASIC declined to attend the conference and will only communicate with the controversial association in writing, amid an escalating dispute with the body.
But AIOFP executive director Peter Johnston accused the regulator of trying to avoid scrutiny.
“Unfortunately, ASIC will not be attending,” Johnston wrote in an email to Berry and Singh, seen by Professional Planner. “We protested that one of their Executives said a few silly inaccurate things about Advisers in front of the Minister, apparently us taxpayers are not meant to keep public servants accountable [sic].” The email copied in ASIC chief executive Greg Yanco.
At the heart of the dispute is the AIOFP’s claim at one of the many Delivering Better Financial Outcomes roundtables hosted by Treasury that ASIC senior executive leader – superannuation and life insurance Jane Eccleston allegedly said, “we are here because financial advisers had been taking money out of clients’ accounts”.
Johnston wrote to ASIC chair Joe Longo, with Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones copied, demanding a written apology from the regulator over the comments.
Yanco reportedly referred to the characterisation as false, misleading and derogatory and wrote that it did not accept the characterisation of Eccleston’s statements and that it was inappropriate for Johnston to continue to propagate these claims in communications to the media and its members.
The AIOFP has a well-known reputation in the advice community for embracing Trumpian-style populist rhetoric. Johnston’s aggressive communication style and infamous email chains have led to a polarising reputation with some advisers viewing him as a champion for an industry that has been downtrodden from government inquiries, royal commissions and burdensome red tape.
But others feel he’s a poor spokesperson for the industry which has spent the last decade trying to argue for its professional status. For many advisers, the “us and them” mentality against the government and regulators puts them of alienating risk-averse clients who are depending on advisers their financial wellbeing.
The association has cultivated a position as an effective outsider. The Joint Associations Working Group included 12 industry bodies claiming to represent financial advisers but notably left out the AIOFP.
Against that backdrop, the association’s events have managed to secure representatives from the government, opposition, along with the regulators and other government agencies. And the association is credited the introduction of the contentious 10-year rule experience pathway.
But by pushing feuds with government entities, it’s just one less voice in an already noisy room.
