The ASIC levy must be made fair for advisers
EDITORIAL
Financial advisers and licensees will have been disappointed that the Government did not use last week’s Budget to extend the freeze on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission funding levy but, pragmatically, that was never going to occur.
What is far more likely to happen is that the Government will use the findings of the Treasury Review of the ASIC industry funding model to tweak the regime to reflect the reality that the financial planning sector is now very different to that which existed when the funding model commenced in July, 2017.
What the Treasury new before it even began the Review in September last year was that the banks had exited the financial advice sector and that the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) regime had generated a mass exodus of financial advisers.
Thus, what financial advice groups should have been lobbying for beyond an extension of the COVID-19-related freeze was changes to the handling of sub-sectors such as financial advice and a change to the ASIC’s internal methodology which saw financial advisers paying for the regulator’s activities in areas which, arguably, had nothing to do with financial advice provision.
Indeed, any reading of the terms of reference of the Treasury Review makes it clear that the bureaucrats know the industry has changed since the levy was first implemented, something underscored by their reference to “Whether key aspects of the design and legislative framework of the IFM remain appropriate, including in light of structural changes in parts of the industry”.
The Treasury document said “this will include considering whether changes are required to any sub-sector definitions and/or levy metrics, and whether any opportunities exist for simplification”.
The bottom line is that in tight Budgetary circumstances Governments are not going to relieve the financial services of the need to significantly fund the regulator, but they might look to more fairly spread the load across sub-sectors and that should mean that financial advisers should not be funding ASIC activity around “greenwashing” or the design and distribution obligations.
It might also be argued that law-abiding, levy-paying and fully registered financial advisers should not be asked to fund ASIC activities with respect to unlicensed advice, but perhaps that is a bridge to far for the denizens of ASIC.
How about Advisers tell ASIC to take their knees off our throats.
Advisers are undoubtably the regulators punching bag of easy blame for anything and everything that goes wrong in the financial world in Australia.
IT IS WAY BEYOND ENOUGH TO CONTINUE THIS ASIC LEAD ADVISER ATTACK.
Grow the hell up ASIC and actually face your own problems.
Every ASIC employee and politician in Canberra, from top to bottom needs to do the FARSEA ethics course and be held to account for this kill Adviser mentality.
In 32 years of advising clients, I have never seen any solitary example that Govt. and Treasury have ever delivered ‘fairness’ to advisers. Simply because there is never anything for Govt. bureaucrats and Pollies can gain from being fair to advisers, every single one of them has a WIIFM mentality – “Tell ’em they’re dreamin”
100% agree, same feeling in my 25yrs Advising.
ADVISERS MUST REVOLT.
TELL ASIC, POLLIES / GOVT TO GET STUFFED.
Nothing else works so let’s stop their system
How about Advisers tell ASIC to take their knees off our throats.
Advisers are undoubtably the regulators punching bag of easy blame for anything and everything that goes wrong in the financial world in Australia.
IT IS WAY BEYOND ENOUGH TO CONTINUE THIS ASIC LEAD ADVISER ATTACK.
Grow the hell up ASIC and actually face your own problems.
Every ASIC employee and politician in Canberra, from top to bottom needs to do the FARSEA ethics course and be held to account for this kill Adviser mentality.
The taxes which the government are imposing on small business are unfair in the extreme. The ASIC levy and the CSOLR simply should not exist. Perhaps the aboriginal land councils which receive hundreds of millions in royalty payments should now start funding some of the government aboriginal departments. Or doctors the bureaucrats in health. And most certainly lawyers should be levied to pay for the court costs. As for politicians, they themselves should pay for the IBAC and other corruption investigative departments.
I know this forum is full of financial advisers so it’s not popular to see the other side of this.
However, as a former client of an ill-behaved financial adviser I was extremely impressed to discover the CSOLR and be assessed as qualifying for their maximum compensation at $150k. How did they screw me over so badly before I realized? Well, it was easy. I’m not in the financial advice industry. So I paid good money for advice. I thought I was paying for good advice. However, over recent years there were generational changes within the advice company and a new CEO got greedy, advising me into purchasing what turned out to be effectively in-house products. And like a lamb to the slaughter, I took the advice for several years before ASIC eventually swung into action.
Now, should ASIC be compensating me or the CSoLR? Not sure but somewhere the industry needs to take responsibility. And as an outsider I don’t mind which party comes to my aid. Agreed, ASIC were too slow. The advice firm is now defunct so minimal compensation there. I’m still $50k+ behind, not to mention my stress levels. So, who are you saying should be paying compensation? If it’s caveat emptor then I’ll forgo the whole advice industry. If enough others see it similarly then you will have no advice industry.