Jones reinforces non-conflicted super advice delivery

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

12 July 2023

The Government has reinforced its view that superannuation funds will be a major conduit for the delivery of more affordable advice, with Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Service, Stephen Jones taking to radio to drive home the point.

Speaking in Brisbane, Jones said he had been working out how more advisers could be brought into the industry and how more information and advice could be delivered.

“So I’m looking at superannuation funds as a likely candidate,” he said.

“How can people who often ring their funds and say, ‘’m planning for retirement, have I got enough super? What should I be doing? How does it interact with the pension? What about my wife?’” Jones said. “And the funds because of the laws we’ve got at the moment say, ‘Sorry, we can’t answer those questions. You’ll have to go to an adviser’, and the adviser will say to them, ‘Sorry, my books are full. I can’t help with you that information’.”

Jones also acknowledged that the financial advice profession had become over-regulated with the result that consumers were being inhibited from obtaining good advice “because there’s just not enough people and not enough avenues to get advice”.

“And that’s what my job is to fix,” he said.

“So, I’ve got three jobs of work going on at the moment. The first is about red tape reduction, removing all the obstacles that don’t provide any consumer protection but do make it harder for a licensed financial provider to provide information and advice to consumers. Hopefully, that will enable advisers to bring more customers in but also reduce the prices.

“A second job of work is looking at how can we safely provide an environment where superannuation funds can provide information to their members. They stopped doing it in large part because of the reforms put in place over the last decade.”

“We do have to ensure that we’re managing for conflicts of interest. So, don’t want to see a situation where someone is getting a commission for providing advice to somebody to buy a product from a superannuation fund that they work for. So, we’ve got to work through all of those conflicts to ensure that information and advice are being given by a fund that’s absolutely in the interests of the person who’s receiving it. And that’s what I’m dealing with the profession and with superannuation funds and with regulators and consumer groups through at the moment.”

“But my objective: ensuring that people can make good decisions because they have good information and they’re not going to, I don’t know, Instagram influencers who have no license, have no knowledge, have no qualifications, and are providing broad and sometimes dangerous information to people.”