MAGAZINE OF CHOICE FOR AUSTRALIA’S WEALTH INDUSTRY
www.moneymanagement.com.au
Vol. 35 No 7 | May 6, 2021
18
SMSFs
Limited advice changes
22
INVESTMENT
Risks of rising inflation
EOFY strategies
AFCA panel’s $30,000 lookback fee
PROPERTY
BY MIKE TAYLOR
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Are we back to normal? DESPITE the last year of market uncertainty and imposed drastic lifestyle changes, with the majority of office workers forced to embrace new remote working arrangements being one of the most significant changes, COVID-19 was not the catastrophe for the property investments sector that everyone had expected. Instead, fund managers said the pandemic gave them the opportunity to stress-test their portfolios. With non-discretionary retail and industrial sectors continuing to hold up extremely well throughout the last few months, it was the office sector that faced headwinds, leaving investors puzzled for a moment about the future of CBDs. At the same time, large shopping malls were the ones that had seen the most valuation softness through the pandemic due to significantly reduced foot traffic but there were also questions over the future sustainable rental levels in those malls. What is more, Ross Lees, Centuria’s head of funds management, stressed interest from the offshore investors remained strong during the pandemic despite travel restrictions. “What we actually saw in 2020 was the largest buyer cohort of Australian office assets came from foreigners. We saw investors particularly from Singapore saying that Australia looks like an incredibly attractive investment destination to them,” he said.
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THE Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) charged nearly $30,000 for a panel considering an old complaint in the wake of the Federal Government allowing complaints lookbacks to 2008. As well, significant concern has been expressed over the manner in which AFCA has moved into hearing what would be regarded as “wholesale client” complaints. The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) has told the Federal Treasury about the financial advice community’s concern about the Government’s decision in February, 2019, to allow AFCA to consider complaints going back to 2008 for a 12-month period from 1 July, that year. “This was extending the timeframe back to a point beyond
where it was mandatory to retain files, and licensees could be forced to defend matters for which they no longer held the records,” the AFA said in a submission. “This was a decision of Government, however it had a broad impact. We have recently become aware of the fees that AFCA were charging for considering these older complaints, where a decision by a panel, for a complex matter, could cost $29,860,” it said. “Whilst this is not a matter that impacts our members, who predominantly operate in the personal advice to retail clients space, we have also become aware that there is a genuine issue with respect to how AFCA has become an attractive option for wholesale clients.” Continued on page 3
Three-month rule won’t change: FASEA BY CHRIS DASTOOR
IF advisers are holding out any hope they might have more opportunities to sit the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) exam by the 1 January, 2022, deadline, FASEA has said there won’t be any change to the three-month rule. The three-month rule meant advisers could only register and sit every second exam, as it was held roughly every two months. It typically took six to seven weeks for advisers to receive their exam results and registrations were usually closed for the next exam by that point. Stephen Glenfield, FASEA chief executive, said advisers had been given multiple opportunities to pass the exam. “If an adviser sat the June 2019 sitting, they had five Continued on page 3
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