Robert says FAAA is ‘pre-eminent body’ in advice

Speaking on a recent ifa podcast, the shadow financial services minister and shadow assistant treasurer, Stuart Robert - who over the weekend announced his shock retirement - said the newly formed Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) is the “pre-eminent body” for financial advisers, and the one that “the government will be listening to”.

“That’s the serious body that represents the bulk of advisers,” Mr Robert said.

“That’s the body that should be owning the standards, the education standards, compliance, enforcement, all of that,” he explained.

Mr Robert also encouraged smaller associations to contemplate folding into the larger group.  

“They [smaller associations] should fold or come and join the larger group in that respect,” he said.

The shadow minister has, for some time, been propagating the idea that the FAAA, as the body combining the former Financial Planning Association and the Association of Financial Advisers, should act as a quasi-regulator and oversee education standards in industry.

Reiterating this point on the podcast, Mr Robert said: “The best thing is for industry to come together, own its compliance, own its regulation, own its enforcement, own its education, own its professional development, own its own standards”.

“If industry does that, government doesn’t need to regulate, it doesn’t need to step in. It can simply support, encourage and if need be, bolster, which is where we are heading now, which I’m so thrilled about.”

Mr Robert explained that when the industry fails to reach consensus, the government has to step in.

“One of the challenges that came out, of course Future Advice [FOFA reforms], the Ripoll report that I was part of, and the implementation changes there, is that the industry couldn’t bring itself together," Mr Robert said.

“It couldn’t bring itself to have a set of education standards. It couldn’t bring itself to have a set of compliance standards. And the industry was asked time and time again. And as we’ve said before, it was very fractured. In desperation then, government stepped in with FASEA. Now, I’ve been the first to admit that I thought FASEA was quite a failure, but it was desperation that saw government do that when industry should have done that itself,” the shadow minister added.

“It’s all well and good for industry to throw rocks at government. But when industry does not self-regulate itself, it gives government no choice. And that’s the key thing. If the government’s got no choice, it has to act.”

To hear more from Mr Robert, click here.