The government is treading carefully in its plans to adequately label its ‘new class of adviser’ (NCA) following rolling industry pushback against any terms that resemble those currently in use, the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) has stated.
FAAA chief executive Sarah Abood said the final name for the NCA was still being decided by the government a year after it released its final response to the Quality of Advice Review recommendations and put forward the suggestion they be named ‘qualified advisers’.
“They’re a little bit burned by their experience when they did suggest a name and my guess is they don’t want the name to be controversial,” Abood said today during a webinar for FAAA members.
“They want to be pretty sure that whatever they come out with is going to be acceptable across the sector. We’ve been asked to provide our thoughts on the name, which we’ve done, and our view is the name should not include financial adviser or financial planner.”
FAAA board chair David Sharpe said this view had been strongly endorsed by the association’s members given those terms were restricted under law.
“Let’s call it a stumble when the term qualified adviser first came out and that got buried very quickly,” Sharpe said.
That was a hard won restriction [made] about eight years ago and those terms are protected in law, and we don’t want to see any quality issues being attributed to advisers and planners who have worked through blood, sweat, tears and great costs to achieve the right to call themselves that.”
Abood said the NCA name should be reflective of the work they will undertake and the information they will provide to clients.
“There is interaction with the other elements of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes package, such as what is the scope of their advice, and whatever the name they come up with has got to clearly signal to the consumer they’re getting something that’s different and lesser than what they can get from a professional financial adviser,” she said.
“We’re certainly expecting there will be more discussion on the package before the draft legislation is released and although we don’t know when that will happen, we expect that finalisation of the name will be part of that.”