Adviser ed changes only a partial answer – industry funds

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

22 April 2026

The industry funds focused Super Members Council has sought to use Treasury’s release of proposed reforms to financial adviser education requirements to push for the urgent delivery of the second tranche of Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) legislation.

Describing the DBFO second tranche as an “urgent consumer safety priority”, the SMC has told Treasury that the education requirement changes, while important, will not close the financial advice gap.

In doing so, it has pushed for the ability of superannuation funds to be more fully empowered with respect to advice delivery.

“While this proposed reform is one important step, simply widening education requirements for entry to the advice profession alone will not close this vast advice gap, nor deliver the complete set of strong safeguards and protections that all consumers deserve irrespective of whether they have the means to pay for comprehensive financial advice,” the SMC said.

“Without better access to the suite of trusted, regulated, safe advice channels including their own trusted super funds which have strong legal duties to safeguard their best financial interests, Australian consumers – especially those with straightforward needs or who are in vulnerable circumstances – face serious and growing risks from high‑pressure sales tactics and misleading information,” it said.

“These proposed changes should be advanced simultaneously with Tranche 2 of the crucial Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms, which are an urgent consumer safety priority.

“DBFO’s second tranche of reforms will expand access to safe, affordable super and retirement advice delivered within tightly regulated frameworks, without exposure to conflicted selling models that thrive in an advice vacuum,” the SMC response said.

“Anything less than a holistic policy approach to financial advice reforms risks implementing only partial solutions that then repeat previous recent consumer harm and undermine confidence in the financial advice and super systems.”

The SMC response said education reform had to be matched by urgent progress on the DBFO reforms in circumstances where the education reforms “are positive directionally but likely to be marginal in impact relative to the scale of the advice gap”.

“They streamline pathways, but do not address the core structural constraints affecting advice affordability, practice economics, and the scalability limits of comprehensive personal advice,” it said.

“If comprehensive advice cannot scale to meet mass-market retirement demand, policy settings must support the expansion of safe complementary advice models such as intra-fund advice with its strong legal safeguards, consumer protections and trustee oversight duties.

“These models are crucial from a consumer protection perspective. Complementary intra-fund advice can provide accessible, trusted and institutionally delivered guidance at scale, reducing reliance on social media, lead generators and other conflicted channels that too often become sources of misinformation, mis-selling and poor retirement solutions.

“The primary mechanism for delivering retirement advice to most Australians will be through their super fund, supported by scalable intra fund advice models. Expanding intra fund advice further into retirement would enable funds to provide targeted and episodic support, that sits alongside a well-designed new class of adviser, and by clarifying that high quality guidance and prompts may be used at scale to complement traditional professional advice,” the SMC response said.