Treasury ‘stunned’ by advice red tape

Treasury officials have been stunned by the amount of paperwork involved in delivering financial advice to clients, according to a major licensee executive.

Madison Financial general manager, Jaime Johns has told Financial Newswire that Treasury officials dealing with submissions being filed as part of the Quality of Advice Review (QAR) had expressed surprise at the level of paperwork required to deliver even relatively simple advice.

Speaking as part of a Financial Advice licensee panel, Johns said she believed it was important that financial advisers concerned by the current regulatory regime made their views clear to Treasury as part of the QAR.

She said that this was certainly the case for licensees who would be filing a joint submission to the QAR.

The joint approach by the licensees will be in addition to both a joint submission filed by the major financial advice organisations alongside their individual submissions.

Johns was speaking on the panel alongside Infocus chief executive, Darren Steinhardt and Advice IQ general manager, Paul Harding-Davis who confirmed the manner in which financial advisers were tending to cull “low-value” clients from their books while seeking to recruit higher value clients.

They also agreed that, in these circumstances, there was a need to extend intra-fund advice and general advice from superannuation funds to meet the needs of the clients who had been culled by advisers.

However, Johns said she did not believe there should be an unfettered extension of intrafund and general advice needing to meet the same checks and balances as comprehensive advice.

“There needs to be a level playing field,” she said.