Former heads of FPA and AFA support merger

Strange…

All the above names, to a larger or slightly lesser degree, allowed weak kneed, subservient, “Bend over and spread” acquiescence to Government and bureaucracy; the ignorant, incompetent O’Dwyer; the malevolent Frydenberg; and the costly, self weaponised “Prosecutor” ASIC [and now, APRA], under the guise of “Go along to get along”; “It could be worse”; “We want to appear cooperative and professional”, with the known consequences.

This included, but was not limited to:

1. The gross perversion of the original intent and implementation of the FSRA, which mushroomed into endless bureaucracy, costly administration, and many, many unintended consequences;
2. The original, functionally well intended ASIC to morph into a bloated monstrosity, and to mushroom, expand, and become an extremely costly, abusive, bureaucratic tool of the institutions; and later, a self serving, self perpetuating, internally corrupt, 800 kg bureaucratic gorilla;
3. The clearly purposeful, grossly dishonest, shamefully cherry picked data of Report 413 to bring in FOFA, commission restrictions, and sky rocketing Risk Premiums; and probably 10’s of thousands of cancelled policies, not to mention lost personal, family, and business Life Insurance coverage;
4. Allowed the clearly unConstitutional theft of contractual, agreed commissions;
5. Accepted costly, vastly excessive, overlapping, repetitive, “Belt and suspenders”, “CYA” administrative and “Compliance” bureaucracy;
6. Accepted an excess of Insurance Industry mergers and takeovers, decimating and shrinking the Insurance Market, stifling competition, innovativeness, and the Premium Pool;
7. “Waved through” deluded, misconceived, and misdirected “Public Interest” policies, as if the Associations were voluntarily funded “Social Think Tanks”, not Industry Associations intended to represent Advisers first and foremost;
8. Generally, had little philosophical, strategic, and “Systemic” and holistic understanding of the purpose, place, and inherent structure of the Financial Services industry, developed over hundreds of years;
9. Allowed the ignorant, rapacious Political Class and Bureaucratic Totalitarians to follow their destructive, economically abusive, short term political and ideological agenda, which was diametrically opposed to the public interest of a viable, self sustaining F/S Industry. This behaviour also ignored following a sensible, logical, substantiated, gradual process of professional reform in favour of bludgeoning thousands of small and micro businesses into short term submission;
10. I won’t even start on the convoluted, woolly thinking, subjectively assessed, abomination of FARCEA…

Remember: the “Political Class” [and they are often interchangeable, hopping from position to position, looking for their next “job”] think that every small business has the endless resources of Government – even the Big Banks, with their almost limitless resources and management systems decided that it was too costly and complicated to continue involvement.

They forgot [or never understood] that every costly, endlessly bureaucratic “solution” of a self discovered “problem” involving 0.05% of the F/S Industry negatively impacts on the 99.95% uninvolved.

By the time a well meaning [or worse, a poorly thought out, ideologically driven, costly process] is written, implemented, slowly absorbed; consequences and loopholes found, seen, and reported; the slow resolution gradually implemented [usually, against the resistance of interested parties, beneficiaries, and ideologues], 10-15-20 years can pass; tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people may be affected, lose businesses, and be driven out of a profession.

All of the above names were involved in the decimation of the Financial Services Industry over the last 10-15-20 years.