Superannuation industry representatives have predicted few immediate change to advice procedures as a result of the government's decision to allow superannuation funds to provide advice to members.
"For us it will be a wait-and-see attitude. Our situation won't change much as we engage Industry Fund Financial Planners (IFFP) for advice and have one embedded planner," Tasplan general manager Neil Cassidy said.
Asset Super chief executive John Paul said his fund had no plans to make immediate changes based on the announcement.
"It's a little bit late as we have already invested in IFFP and I don't think the trustees would want to retreat from that. Even though the regulators have made life a little easier for the fund to be able to give some forms of restricted advice, I don't think we would want to go backwards," Paul said.
However, he said the fund might look into other opportunities from the intra-fund policy change in the future.
"We may want to change our procedure to allow people in the field to start offering simple advice, but right now we haven't made a change and I haven't contemplated bringing it forward yet," he said.
Cassidy said Tasplan might look at obtaining an Australian financial services licence.
"The general perception at the moment is that we would look at all types of scenarios and once we start getting feedback from members about what their needs and wants are, we will determine what to do next," he said.
Tasplan would initially look at allowing its service managers to provide more information when they ran workplace seminars, he said.
"But we totally welcome this announcement and it should have been done ages ago. I think it will also be a wake-up call to the financial planning industry. They will have to be a lot more accountable about conflicts of interest than they have been in the past," he said.
IFFP national practice manager for professional services Frank Gayton said despite superannuation funds not making immediate changes, financial planning practices would most likely be affected.
"What will happen is that a lot of financial planners will find it very hard to survive financially. The number of people available for high-level advice may drop away and this will affect the viability of a number of financial planning practices," Gayton said.
He said superannuation funds would need to adapt to the changes and start looking towards the future.
"They will have to train people. This will give a lot of call-centre staff career options as they will be able to move into other fields as they get more experience," he said.
Paul said the government's move was a positive for superannuation funds and their members.
"I can understand the FPA being concerned, but at the moment financial planning is one size fits all and the reality is that for many Australians they really only need single-issue advice," he said.
