The Financial Advice Association Australia launched a Federal Election Hub listing candidates for every seat around the country and outlining their positions on the FAAA’s five key election issues.
The election hub allows advisers to search their specific electorate and how the candidate’s views align with each part of the FAAA electoral wish list: fixing the CSLR, adviser ATO portal access, delivering the DBFO reforms, support for new entrants, and cutting red tape.
The hub doesn’t include every candidate’s position, with opposition leader Peter Dutton, shadow Minister for Financial Services Luke Howarth, and Treasurer Jim Chalmers notably absent.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is listed as “it’s complicated” for all issues bar cutting red tape which receives a “doesn’t support”, while shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor receives a green tick in every box.
Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones’s successor as Labor candidate for Whitlam, Carol Berry, is listed as “doesn’t support” for red tape reduction and “it’s complicated” for the other four areas.
Despite Dutton and Howarth not being listed, the Coalition offered the association a detailed letter outlining its response to each policy position, which largely aligns with the FAAA’s goals.
The association has previously welcomed the opposition’s announcement it will create a “deregulation taskforce” to largely revoke unpopular reforms from its previous term of government.
However, the association has stopped of endorsing the Coalition or any individual candidate, instead seeking only to guide members on advice policy reform.
“It’s our goal for financial advice policy to be bipartisan as much as possible, which substantially increases the chances of needed reform being enacted,” FAAA chief executive Sarah Abood said in a statement.
“We make no comment about the rest of the policy platform of the Coalition or any other political stakeholder.”
The Coalition’s response to the FAAA’s policy survey laid out how it will halve the subsector cap, exclude “but for” compensation, and won’t issue any special levies this year.
AFCA’s contentious “but for” methodology – which the authority refers to as “counterfactual” claims – has drawn the ire of the FAAA which highlighted the issue at its National Congress in Brisbane last year.
Roughly 80 per cent of advice claims heading to the CSLR are considered “but for” claims and Jones indicated in a speech at the Professional Planner Advice Policy Summit this year this would likely change pending completion of Treasury’s review into the scheme.
The $20 million subsector cap meant the CSLR levy would be max out at around $1300 per adviser, depending on how many advisers were listed on the ASIC Financial Adviser Register, and doesn’t count any special levy that could be added.
That’s come with a rising ASIC levy, after the previous Coalition government froze it in 2021 and Minister Jones choosing not to pursue further reform.
These fixes were described as “urgent action” by the Coalition which would mitigate the issues with the scheme.
This would be followed by further work including removing future situations such as vertically-integrated schemes like Dixon Advisory being able to shirk liabilities and to instead rely on the CSLR to cover remediation, along with reducing the “excessive” administration costs of the scheme, as well as considering any other outcomes of the Treasury review.
“The Coalition is concerned by how the CSLR is driving up advisers’ costs,” the Coalition’s survey response said.
“The Albanese Government has watched on over the last two years as the industry levy for financial advisers skyrocketed.”
The Coalition would also provide adviser access to the ATO portal but would only provide read-only information about their clients’ tax affairs to help them provide financial advice.
The survey response also confirmed the Coalition’s pledge to deliver the Quality of Advice Review reform, but will take it a step further ongoing fee arrangements, including annual opt-in and fee consent forms.
“The Albanese Government has failed in its commitment to streamline these fee consent forms which create additional compliance costs which are ultimately passed on to consumers,” the Coalition said.
The first tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes legislation gave the minster the power to streamline fee consent forms, although Minister Jones is yet to utilise this power.
While the FAAA had called on the government to support practices that hire Professional Year advisers with a $10,000 payment and subsidising the adviser exam, the Coalition’s support for new entrants will consist of changing the education standard and “reducing red tape and compliance costs” to support new entrants.
Minister Jones announced at the Advice Policy Summit plans to expand the education pathway to include a broader range of degrees.
The Coalition had previously announced it would target building the advice industry to 30,000 advisers, and to include the target in ASIC’s Statement of Expectations, although it hasn’t made clear how that aim wouldn’t be odds with ASIC’s enforcement role.
Taylor had also promised to introduce an omnibus financial services bill that would include advice reform within 100 days should they win the election.
