CIFAA celebrates its first year

The Certified Independent Financial Advisers Association (CIFAA), founded a year ago by Perth-based advisers Christopher Young and Nick Bruining and Victorian-based Berivan Dubier, who is also a former FPA director, is celebrating its first birthday.

The association, which prides itself on being entirely consumer-focused, now boasts 42 full members, almost all of which are reportedly university graduates, and one student member.

“CIFAA’s main objective is to ensure our members become the primary source of information and advice for consumers and others seeking truly objective financial advice. By removing product bias and other conflicts, we’re satisfying a need that’s clearly in demand,” said CIFAA president Chris Young.

“We want to bring our expertise and considerable experience to influence policy outcomes for consumers. While that includes the consumer benefits of receiving legally independent advice, it also takes in areas such as taxation policy, superannuation, welfare, and other areas.”

Responding to criticism regarding the number of associations serving the small advice industry, Mr Young said CIFAA’s model is unique.

“Other associations tend to concentrate their resources on industry issues affecting their members and their associated business models. And as we have seen, unfortunately in many cases, that has met with very limited success. CIFAA’s objective is primarily consumer focused,” he said.

CIFAA is run and staffed entirely by volunteer practitioner members.

“Our plan has always been to grow the organisation organically. We are sure that there will come a time where we will need administrative support and then perhaps, a CEO.  But our constitution has specific clauses preventing any individual member or director benefiting directly from CIFAA,” Mr Young said.

“Our slogan is ‘run by members for members’ and we’ll stick to that approach.”

CIFAA’s immediate objective is to attract advisers who satisfy S923a of the Corporations Act and to provide guidance to those advisers who wish to make the change.

“While there’s no accurate number, the estimate is somewhere between 200 and 300 S923a advisers nationally so at 42 members, we’re already over 10 per cent,” Mr Young added.

Last month, ifa revealed that Canberra has expressed concern over the multitude of associations claiming to represent advisers.

Following their meeting with a Treasury department tasked with overseeing the government’s response to the Quality of Advice Review, the Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals (AIOFP) revealed to ifa that politicians and bureaucrats are “dubious” about the multitude of associations representing the advice community.

Haydn van Nek, operations manager at Kelly Wealth, recently shared a similar sentiment with ifa, explaining on a podcast that the advice industry is in dire need of a prominent industry voice that doesn’t act only as a mouthpiece for the regulators.