AIOFP claims platform in-house trustees ‘profoundly conflicted’

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

29 April 2026

The Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals (AIOFP) is urging its members to avoid platforms with in-house trustees and, as advisers, to assert their ownership of the client relationship.

AIOFP executive director, Peter Johnston has urged advisers dealing with what he describes as “conflicted platform structures” to have their clients specifically ensure that advisers are looped into all correspondence.

“If you have current clients in a conflicted platform structure we suggest the following action –

• Get your client to inform Platform Management [which includes the Trustee] in writing that they want all future correspondence directed to them by Management to be shared with you their trusted Adviser.
• Your client to also give written permission to Platform Management that you their Adviser should always have access to their information until otherwise informed.

“This message puts Management on notice about you the Adviser has the relationship with your client and educates your client on the circumstances going forward if unexpected events occur,” Johnston’s message to members said.

Johnston said that the AIOFP would be writing to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Prudential Reuglation Authority (APRA) suggesting that product manufacturers, including platform managers, cannot be both manager and trustee.

He claimed such relationships are “profoundly conflicted and not in the best interests of consumers or advisers”.

At the same time, he listed platforms which he asserts have ‘conflicted relationships’ because of their in-house trustee structure.

• AMP – NM Super Trustee, wholly owned subsidiary.
• CFS – Avanteous Ltd,  wholly owned Subsidiary.
• Fiducian  –  Fiducian Portfolio Services – wholly owned subsidiary
• Hub 24 – HTFS Ltd – wholly owned subsidiary.
• Netwealth – Netwealth Superannuation Services – wholly owned subsidiary.
• Macquarie – MIML – wholly owned subsidiary.

“The only major Platform with an independent Trustee is Dash,” Johnstone wrote.

His message to members claimed that the platforms are seeking to use the collapse of Shield and First Guardian to assert control via the in-house trustee function.

“Ignore this development to your peril, for decades the role of the Trustee has been trivialised and even ignored by many as an unnecessary non-descript functionary of our Profession – this in no longer the case,” he wrote.

“This time around the brilliant Financial Institutional strategist FSC are not focused on culling Advisers but taking control of the Advisers practice and client base by stealth.

“In fact the FSC are actively trying to recruit Advisers into their Institutional dominated membership – a bold and impudent strategy to conceal their intentions.

“The First Guardian/Shield [FGS] failure has fundamentally changed financial advice in political terms and it is now responsible for the emerging structural change to Advice delivery.

“This time however the Adviser Profession can make a significant difference to the outcome by making a principled decision to reject an emerging  conflicted operating environment,” Johnstone wrote.