The federal government’s financial advice reforms were eating up a lot of the FPA’s time, leaving it unable to prioritise more issues, the association’s chief said yesterday.
The FPA is currently prioritising its work into two main areas: the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms and addressing the findings of ASIC’s retirement advice shadow shopping survey with Australia’s advice sector in May.
“FOFA is just absorbing a lot of our time at this point in time,” FPA chief executive Mark Rantall told InvestorDaily.
“We’re seeking to navigate through as many concessions that we possibly can.”
He said the FOFA reforms were still a strong priority for the association because there was still so much work to do.
“There is still a number of reforms that are out there that are working on accountants’ exemption, the tax agents’ registration, the last resort compensation scheme, and the list goes on,” Rantall said.
“So I’ve never seen, in my entire career, so much legislative change impacting our profession and/or industry. There is no shortage of things that we’re working on.”
The FPA also said the shadow shopping survey was a significant event and it was seeking to get ahead of whatever came out of the report.
Meanwhile, Rantall said the FPA continued to push for the removal of opt-in from the FOFA draft legislation, which was nearing a vote in Parliament as InvestorDaily‘s deadline approached.
“The FPA does not support opt-in, has never supported opt-in, and continues to work even now to have opt-in removed,” he said.
Reports have circulated of an agreement between the FPA and Industry Super Network to jointly support opt-in for at least four years from the 1 July 2013 start date.
“These are unconfirmed reports and we’ve dealt with many organisations over many months and years on the [FOFA] reform,” Rantall said.
Asked whether he would back a compromise move on opt-in, he said: “I’m not in a position to talk about any of the discussions that are currently happening with ministers, independents, opposition or the government of the day. We continue to have those discussions.”
When asked whether there was a document detailing an agreement between the ISN and FPA, he said he had not seen such a document, but stopped short of denying its existence.
“I don’t know of the document you’re talking about. I’ve heard that there’s a document. Media have told me there’s a document, but I don’t know what that document looks like, I don’t know what the date of that document is and, to be honest, I don’t know the substance of it.”
The House of Representatives shifted debate on the Corporations Amendment (Future of Financial Advice) Bill 2011 and the Corporations Amendment (Further Future of Financial Advice Measures) Bill 2011 yesterday to the Federation Chamber, given the hefty list of topics scheduled yesterday for debate in the lower house.
Today is the last day the House of Representatives sits until May, when the federal budget is expected to dominate debate.
Industry bodies and the government are continuing to lobby independents, regarded as key to what is expected to be an extremely tight vote.
“Our talks with crossbenchers will continue up to the last minute,” a spokesman for Financial Services and Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten said.
