The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) will encourage its members to become more politically active at a grassroots level to head off crises like that posed by the uncertainty surrounding proposed government reforms, the association’s chief said.
Asked whether he would look to AFA advisers to spearhead that movement, Richard Klipin said: “Absolutely.”
Klipin said the adviser-led campaign would be an ongoing activity aimed at furthering parliamentary members’ understanding of advisers and their clients. He said the effort would support the AFA’s high-level political engagement.
“We need to now get on the front foot with our political activism, rather than wait until a crisis shows up. That’s the key thing we’ve learned to date, and that is something that is very much on the AFA’s agenda,” he said.
The financial advice industry was caught largely by surprise when Financial Services and Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten’s Future of Financial Advice reforms bore scant resemblance to the so-called Ripoll report drafted by Bernie Ripoll and his team.
The AFA, FPA and other advice bodies were forced to scramble to form views, get access to government and attempt to persuade politicians to take those views on board.
“Actually, there’s been a lot of collaboration across the industry of advisers irrespective of their association of seeing their members of Parliament,” Klipin said.
“The fact that advisers have become politically active is the success of the collective message. They’ve got out of their comfort zone, they’ve understood the power they have in terms of expressing their views at a local level and a political level.”
