ASIC estimates adviser levies for 2018-19

Licensees providing personal advice to retail clients on relevant financial products will likely have to pay $1,500 plus $907 per adviser, ASIC said in its Cost Recovery Implementation Statement (CRIS) for its funding model for 2018-19.

For licensees providing personal advice to retail clients on products that are not relevant financial products, the levy is predicted to be $1,958.

Licensees only providing general advice will likely have a flat $828 levy, while licensees providing personal advice only to wholesale clients will be expected to pay a flat $566 levy.

This information will help industry better plan for the actual levy, which will not be billed until January 2020.

The indicative levies are a guide and the amounts are likely to change when ASIC’s regulatory costs are known and published in December 2019.

“This information will help industry better plan for the actual levy, which will not be billed until January 2020,” ASIC said.

“The indicative levies are a guide and the amounts are likely to change when ASIC’s regulatory costs are known and published in December 2019.”

Further, ASIC also outlined its main regulatory areas of focus on the financial advice sector, including:

• risk-based supervision and surveillance of the practices of financial advisers, based on its threat, harm and behaviour framework, to identify and address harms that threaten good investor and consumer outcomes;
• advice compliance at the five largest financial advice firms;
• testing industry compliance with the fee disclosure statement and renewal notice obligations, including reviewing samples of documentation provided to clients;
• monitoring firms’ remediation programs for fee-for-no-service breaches and continuing to investigate misconduct and take enforcement action;
• developing an approved product list reporting regime for firms that issue products and provide advice; and
• providing information and support to guide consumers’ decisions about setting up SMSFs and engaging where poor advice has been provided to consumers.

Adrian Flores

Adrian Flores is a deputy editor at Momentum Media, focusing mainly on banking, wealth management and financial services. He has also written for Public Accountant, Accountants Daily and The CEO Magazine.

You can contact him on [email protected].