Speaking to InvestorDaily, Mr Kalman – who heads up Equity Trustees’ corporate fiduciary and financial services division – said Australia’s financial services industry is a “one-trick pony”.
“We’ve got this nine per cent [superannuation contribution] coming into our investment vehicles and into our industry and we’re living largely off that,” Mr Kalman said.
“We’re getting very good at what we’re doing, but we’re not exporting [financial services],” he said.
There are two reasons behind Australia’s apparent failure thus far to export its funds management capability overseas, Mr Kalman argued.
“The first is because the regulators haven’t understood that it’s all about using our AFSL and allowing us to expand,” he said.
“The second thing is we don’t’ have the right collective investment vehicle.”
ASIC, however, has to shoulder a fair proportion of the blame as well, Mr Kalman added.
The corporate regulator currently has a class order in place that exempts overseas investors from the AFSL regime, but has negotiated nothing in return, he said.
“Right now, if you’re in the US, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, Guernsey, Jersey, the Cayman Islands and the like, you can come and be a fund manager into Australia for wholesale clients with an AFSL expemption,” he said.
“So if a US manager comes into Australia, they can run Australian institutional money. If an Australian manager goes into the US they get no exemption in a similar way.
“This is a failure of the regulator not understanding … that if they give an exemption they’ve got to get something in return,” he said.
