MAGAZINE OF CHOICE FOR AUSTRALIA’S WEALTH INDUSTRY
www.moneymanagement.com.au
Vol. 34 No 8 | May 21, 2020
20
BOUTIQUES
The small firm advantage
FIXED INCOME
24
COVID-19 stimulus measures
Stretching for yield
ADVISER SENTIMENT
Could ASIC grant class order relief on the FASEA exam? BY MIKE TAYLOR
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Taking a ‘glass half full’ approach IT has already been an emotional year given the wave of uncertainty and anxiety the world has been riding as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unsurprisingly, financial advisers have since been inundated with calls from clients but what is surprising is that advisers are reporting more meaningful conversations. This is one of the rare positives to come out of the pandemic, advisers are finding that, as clients have had more time to educate themselves on investments, this has allowed for more productive conversation between advisers and their clients. However, adviser sentiment in general has been quite mixed, according to Lifespan Financial Planning chief executive, Eugene Ardino. Ardino said there were advisers in “pretty dark” places as they were struggling commercially and mentally due to business concerns, coupled with regulatory change, educational requirements and grappling with restructuring their income streams. Fitzpatricks Private Wealth WA lead adviser, Garry Symonds, said it was important for advisers to have a good network during this time. “Professional isolation is tough for people at this point in time and if advisers are not connected to groups, whether it is a dealer group or not, it would be very tough. There is a lot of value with being connected,” he said.
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TOOLBOX
AS a Parliamentary stalemate developed around passage of the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) exam extension legislation, questions were being asked about whether the Government would back the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) delivering class order relief to affected advisers. Industry spokesmen including Financial Planning Association (FPA) chief executive, Dante De Gori, have questioned whether the Government could allow ASIC to deliver the class order relief to advisers in the same fashion it had done so for advisers with respect to the requirement to be a member of a code-monitoring organisation. De Gori said that the whole exercise around the passage of the legislation through the Senate had become entirely frustrating in circumstances where both the Government and the Federal Opposition had reassured his
organisation and the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) that they would be supporting the FASEA exam extension legislation. However, the exam extension legislation is not a piece of standalone legislation but, rather, part of an omnibus bill, elements of which the Opposition has said it wants to debate. There is no certainty about the ability of ASIC to deliver on class order relief with respect to the exam extension, and FASEA chief executive, Stephen Glenfield, made clear to a Money Management forum last year that the authority’s hands were tied on the exam timetable in the absence of amending legislation. De Gori told Money Management that in the absence of the major parties seeing sense on the issue in the Senate, it was likely to be many weeks before the matter could be dealt with again. That means that a lot of planners are going to have to make some hard decisions about how and when they are going to sit the FASEA exam in the limited time that may be left.
KKR provides CBA with chance of a dignified exit from CFS THE key words to note about the Commonwealth Bank’s decision to sell a 55% stake in Colonial First State to giant private equity player KKR are these: “CBA is committed to working with KKR in the medium-term to achieve a range of objectives that will create value for all stakeholders though a successful separation of CFS from CBA and the creation of a standalone business. CBA intends to maintain its shareholding in CFS throughout this period and further assess its longer-term intentions thereafter.” Continued on page 3
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