Financial advisers will continue to benefit from a freeze in the level of the cost recovery levy applied to them by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), with the fees totalling $24 million for the sector.
ASIC released its draft Cost Recovery Implementation Statement (CRIS) for 2021/22 in which it stated the cost of the minimum levy to be imposed on financial services licensees that provide personal advice to retail clients will be $1500 and the cost per adviser will be $1142.
This latter figure was set by the previous government as part of a freeze applied to the 2021 and 2022 financial years and set the levy at the level imposed in 2018/19 after a number of industry bodies protested against a proposed increase in it to $3138.
The licensee fee will be paid by 2759 licensees and the adviser fee paid by 17,402 advisers, based on figures from 17 March 2022, generating $24.012 million for ASIC.
In the CRIS, the corporate regulator stated its areas of focus in the coming year, which will be funded by the levy, will include identifying and taking action against unlicensed advice, establishing and running the single disciplinary body, the administration of the financial adviser exam, a new registration system for financial advisers and dealing with barriers to making advice more accessible.
ASIC stated the draft CRIS contains levies for all sectors overseen by the regulator, but they were currently only a guide based on its planned regulatory work and estimated levies to recover regulatory costs.
Feedback on the draft document is open until 28 June 2022 and final levies will be published in December 2022 and invoiced between January and March 2023.
