Shadow Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation Senator Mathias Cormann presented at No More Practice Live, a one-day event dedicated to helping practice owners improve their practice value and grow their business, held in Sydney on Thursday 9 August 2012. Following is an edited excerpt of his presentation on opportunities for advisers in the future:
As financial advisers, you need to be confident about what you do and the contribution you make to the community and broader economy. At times there has been contentious public debate about the industry, but you shouldn’t beat yourself up over these broader debates and issues, as there are always going to be critics who are outspoken on certain issues.
Now politicians aren’t that popular as far as occupations go, and it can be easy to get distracted by generic commentary that it not necessarily always based on fact. And you can get a bit intimidated in terms of how you approach things. But you should be confident in what you do.
As a financial adviser, what you ultimately do is help people with their financial wellbeing, manage financial risks through their lives, help them maximise financial opportunities and help people who get through to retirement age achieve an appropriately funded retirement.
These are all very important things in our lives, and of course the better the advice and support we receive as we go through our journey, the better the position we will be in to face the challenges of life.
Yes, sometimes things go wrong and if there are bad outcomes from the industry there should be strong and appropriate action in such cases. But if you look at the financial services industry in Australia and how we weathered the GFC, we do have a very robust, high quality financial services sector. There is always room for improvement and room to increase professional standards and better deliver on that commitment to high quality advice. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If we are concerned that not enough people are seeking financial advice, that will only get worse if we make it more complex, more expensive and more difficult for people to get in the front door.
This is why we have been quite critical of the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms. There has to be a balance between making sure we have appropriate levels of consumer protection while making sure that access to advice remains available and affordable. In the interests of making high quality financial advice more available accessible and affordable to more Australians, I think we first need to look at current compliance burdens.
The Coalition has a serious commitment to cutting red tape, and we want to identify $1 billion in savings for business by cutting unnecessary red tape and compliance burdens out of the system. What I am looking for from the industry are suggestions and recommendations for cutting red tape that doesn’t add value. Ultimately, we’re all after a more efficient, more transparent and more competitive financial services industry that will deliver maximum value to consumers.
