The Financial Advice Association says it will be supportive of the new class of adviser if the advice profession has the same access to the regime as the super funds and other institutions.
“What we want is a level playing field,” FAAA general policy for advice Phil Anderson told Congress in Brisbane.
“If it’s possible for those roles to be employed by institutions then it should also be possible for them to be employed by advice practices.”
The new class of adviser – once dubbed “qualified adviser” when Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones announced the new second tier a year ago – has been a contentious part of the second tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes legislation which has been promised by the end of the year.
“Let’s look at the detail, let’s wait to see it but let’s keep an open mind as to how we can make it work, both for institutions and for advice practices,” Anderson said.
Briefing media after Anderson’s session, FAAA chief executive Sarah Abood couldn’t specify whether the super funds would back the association’s position.
“I’m sure you’re all aware that there’s a lot of conversations going on, also that we’ve all signed NDAs so we can’t be specific about the content of those negotiations,” Abood said referring to the closed-door discussions on the DBFO bill held by Treasury first reported by Professional Planner.
“I don’t think it’s any secret the funds have been public about this, they’re not all taking the same position so even if you restricted to profit-to-member or industry funds many of them have different strategies in advice.
“Some of them are employing their own comprehensive advisers, some of them are just doing intrafund advice, some of the referring their members who need advice.”
The pain of a name
While Jones had indicated earlier in the year the controversial “qualified adviser” name would be replaced, FAAA chair David Sharpe said the association does not want the terms adviser or planner to be in the new name, even including the restricted adviser term used in the UK.
But despite the protective use of the term, the association hinted it was still open to including them into the membership maintaining its position from earlier in the year that it would leave it up to the membership to decide when specific details are more certain.
But at this point in time, Abood said there wasn’t a strong view from members either way.
“There are some members that are saying absolutely they should become members because you need to look after them you need to make sure that their transition to advisers is good, that they’re doing the right thing,” Abood said, noting there are advisers that see the new class of advisers as competition.
Head to the polls
While Jones had promised the second tranche of DBFO legislation by the end of the year, the chance of it being voted on in Parliament before the next election is virtually non-existent.
FAAA senior manager for government relations and policy George John said the current likelihood would be a March election, likely in the second or third Saturday of the month.
“The government has called for submissions to its pre-budget process already which is quite early, but basically they can run a campaign that runs anywhere from 33 to 68 days,” John said.
“If you wanted a sense of what Canberra is like at the moment, there are 36 bills before the Senate that the government is trying to kick out the door. I don’t think they’ll be successful at getting all of them, but they’ll get a pretty broad sweep.”
Included in this pipeline is Labor’s marquee objective of super bill and its controversial changes of the tax threshold of super balances above $3 million.
