Connect and engage

Is ASIC not charging a fee to monitor ASFLs and Advisers each year?  Your argument/statement  sounds like perfect justification to cancel this fee ASIC collects?

Extortion is now 'regulation'

If you’re not educating clients to get a photo ID card before they lose their driver’s licence, that’s on you. It works just as well as a licence, and after 25 years of opening accounts and processing transactions across all kinds of platforms, I’ve had no more issues in 2025 than I did in 2005. So what’s all the fuss about?









Ask ChatGPT

Thats the longest article in the world - without any mention of the expected actual levy cost....?

As an 82year old, and former financial adviser, I can relate very much to this article. I now live in an independent retirement village with my wife, and we are doing OK. However, there are many in our village who are burdened by the situations you have revealed, and they sometimes ask me for advice. I don't offer much for obvious reasons - people can still sue retired professionals.

Ageism is a curse in Australia, and I suspect in many other developed nations. We need some respect and support from a set of cultural and societal values recognising that we (the present seniors) played their role in contributing to the development of our nation.

I am of the opinion that no political party in Australian offers any more than trite discussion in regard to the responsible support of its senior citizens

Search Class Action Macquarie, the comment section removes links or naming the firm.  

So are ASIC going to go after some of these superfund insurance arrangements which have exclusions for pre-existing conditions? 

Unfortunately to true

Proportional Liability ? 

Yep, I’m one of them. Fully qualified, interested in finance, fifteen years experience, really enjoy helping people and in my early forties (lots of working years left) but the compliance and red tape these days makes it almost unbearable as a line of work. Left financial planning to get paid less to do work I’m less qualified to do but at least I’m happier. I’d get back into financial planning if the government toned the extreme regulation down.

The KYC, AML, ATF laws have made opening an account a nightmare. It is the legacy of the Banking RC and the rise of cyber-crime however, strict compliance is now paramount and customer service is secondary. This will only get worse when bots handle onboarding and no human hand touches an application.
The article points out the faults in the system. Remember back when an Australia Card was proposed? Absolute outrage. Look where we are today and that good old Aust Card sounds similar to the author's suggested Senior's Card system. The beauty of an Aust Card is it could be obtained when a person has capacity and then only needs renewing periodically. As to current residential address differing due to aged care placement, that could be sorted by maintaining the home as a mailing address or, make the card able to write the facility address as the home address. After all, it is, and if the operator signed the notification, surely the department that issued the card could be satisfied? And the Aust card should equal 100 points.
Something has got to give, the system is chocking on compliance. The nanny state is having a real hey-day.

je suis d'accord

Great article.

I said a while ago if we ALL stood up and said enough and we won't pay.  Where are the insurers here?

Correct this is the only profession that evryone pays for the bad of others!!  It is the administration of this that is criminal!!

Advisers, along with the AFSL authorising them, are responsible for the advice given. The end.

Why has there not been a review into how these businesses blow up clients money? They need to question the role of ASIC because it is no good coming in when all the money is gone. They need to review the auditors, the research providers,and trustees in this whole scenario and ask how this has slipped through so many layers of "oversight".  

While they are at it, they can review the process AFCA follow. Ramming claims though to the CSLR because of an incorrect asset allocation is BS too. inocrrect Asset allocations do not blow up investments. Bad investments blow up bad investments! 

Where are the ethicists on this one?

They were pretty chirpy post Royal Commission a few years ago. 

How is it ethical that my clients in semi-regional Australia pay for the sins of Melbourne clowns?

Interesting that we have all these onerous obligations on Advisers from Ethical testing and outrageous educational standards, yet we still have crooks in the industry. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that that all these new requirements were never going to get rid of crooks. It just got rid of all the good people. 

Interesting that 22K candidates have passed the exam, but only 15K work as financial planners.

This underscores the stupidity of trying to "attract more people to the profession" or "lowering barriers to entry". The real issue is that bad regulation makes financial planning too unattractive to work in. There are 7K people already qualified to be financial planners, who have chosen not to. Fix the bad regulation, and there will be no problem getting qualified people to work in the profession.