‘Shouldn't fear accountants’ providing advice: Howarth

Appearing on The ifa Show, Howarth supported calls for accountants to be able to provide some form of financial advice to help fill the gap in advice accessibility.

Following Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones’ December announcement of greater detail on how the new class of adviser (NCA) would operate under the government’s proposed reforms, the SMSF Association argued the role accountants could play was still being overlooked.

SMSFA chief executive Peter Burgess said at the time there is no argument reforms are needed to reduce the cost of advice and to open up new channels of professional advice, however it remains a mystery as to why accountants aren’t being considered.

“It was our contention that the Quality of Advice Review neglected the significant role accountants can play in addressing the growing advice gap, and the government is perpetuating this oversight,” Burgess said.

“By giving accountants a defined advice role, it will further support consumers to access the advice they need when they want it from their choice of trusted adviser.”

Speaking with ifa, Howarth said the SMSFA is “on the right track there”.

“At the end of the day, I respect accountants significantly,” he said.

“My experience with accountants is they've provided good advice. They're often people that you go to if you want to look at setting up a self-managed super fund and they're qualified people that know tax law inside out.

“So, giving a little bit of advice, I don't fear that at all from accountants and I think it probably should be looked at.”

While the accountants’ exemption previously allowed accountants to provide certain types of limited financial advice, this was removed in 2016 and replaced with the limited AFSL regime, though there are only a small number of accountants operating under the regime.

Howarth added that the Labor government’s approach to regulating accountants in general has been “absolutely atrocious”, specifically pointing to the process of changing the tax practitioners’ code of conduct.

“They were about to get it disallowed in the Senate and at the last minute they scrambled to make changes,” he said.

“But this should never have happened in the first place. This was lazy policy done from someone who doesn't understand or hasn't run a small business or hasn't had a career outside politics or unions that really has no idea what accountants do.

“And the vast majority of accountants are trusted individuals that give good advice and I back them every day of the week. I think they've really had been treated poorly by Albanese and his minister.”

The shadow minister added that there needs to be more collaboration between the professions.

“Financial advisers shouldn't fear accountants. Accountants are good people, they're well qualified and we actually want to try to get more people into financial advice as well,” Howarth said.

“There's plenty of work for them at the moment. We want to reduce their regulations so let's work together.”

To hear more from Luke Howarth, tune in here.