ASIC’s COVID relief for advice to automatically repeal next week

ASIC has announced that the temporary relief for financial advice will be automatically repealed on 15 April 2022.

Initially introduced in April 2020 before commencing the following year, the instrument extended relief for:

• ‘Situations in which statement of advice is not required’ relief. This relief allows financial advisers to provide a record of advice, rather than a statement of advice, to existing clients requiring financial advice due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• ‘Urgent advice’ relief. This relief allows financial advisers additional time to give their clients a time-critical statement of advice.

“ASIC undertook targeted industry consultation to better understand the effects of our approach. Based on feedback, we do not consider that the current status of COVID-19 responses in Australia provides a sufficient basis for a decision by ASIC to further extend the relief provided by the COVID-19 Instrument,” the regulator said in a statement on Thursday, 7 April.

The relief measures were further extended in October last year, with ASIC saying at the time that consultation with the industry identified that an extension was needed given the current circumstances.

Neil Griffiths

Neil is the Deputy Editor of the wealth titles, including ifa and InvestorDaily.

Neil is also the host of the ifa show podcast.

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