FAAA submission on draft legislation – DBFO Tranche 2A

The FAAA’s submission to Treasury on the draft legislation for Delivering Better Financial Outcomes Tranche 2 Part A, “Improving access to affordable and quality financial advice”, has made the following key recommendations:

• Retirement planning advice will always be complex and costly advice and should not be provided on a collectively charged basis.
• Consumer protection is paramount in the provision of super nudges, particularly with respect to retirement planning, and members should be made fully aware of the implications of acting upon these nudges.
• Super nudges should not be provided to superannuation fund members with an external financial adviser, or at least should be subject to a notice to disregard the nudge if they have already obtained financial advice.
• The financial advice regulatory regime should be principles based and permit professional financial advisers to rely upon their professional judgement. ASIC guidance and enforcement must reflect this design principle.
• The opportunity to utilise a Record of Advice should be substantially expanded to better enable the use of this streamlined form of financial advice.
• Every effort must be made to sensibly rationalise what needs to be included in an advice document, including with respect to eliminating the prospect of additional obligations being added at a later time through regulation or ASIC guidance.

Read the submission.