CA ANZ throws support behind Coalition’s plans for accountants in advice

Chartered Accountants ANZ (CA ANZ) has said it supports the federal opposition’s announcements aimed at enabling financial professionals to “support Australians to rebuild wealth”.

Speaking at Momentum Media’s Election 2025 event last week, shadow financial services minister Luke Howarth reiterated the Coalition’s intention to make it easier for accountants to provide advice, particularly around SMSFs, if it were to win the election.

The demand for advice, Howarth said, will “only be increasing”, which necessitates an expanding pool of advisers to match it.

As announced last Thursday, the Coalition has put a numeric target on this goal – aiming to boost the profession’s numbers to 30,000.

Forming part of this goal to expand access to advice is “making it easier for accountants to provide advice”, particularly when it comes to setting up self-managed superannuation funds.

“The current limited licensing model does not work. It isn’t being used, and we need something better,” Howarth said.

He added: “I’m just saying that accountants are good people in relation to self-managed super funds in particular, they should be able to give advice on setting them up. They should be able to give advice on closing them down.”

Susan Franks, CA ANZ tax, superannuation and financial services leader, said the association was pleased to hear the opposition address this area, along with a broader push to streamline advice regulation.

“CA ANZ has been advocating for all Australians to have access to financial advice by allowing qualified accountants to provide it and we look forward to hearing more details about the Coalition’s announcement,” said Franks.

“We note the Coalition has also promised to reform education and relevant degree standards to get more financial advisers into the industry as the current requirements are too restrictive and fail to cater for those who have related qualifications such as business degrees.

“We are pleased to see that the Coalition has committed to simplifying Australia’s corporations law and establishing a deregulation taskforce, especially in relation to financial services. The current financial services laws are a quagmire and in need of urgent reform and simplification to reduce compliance costs.”

Fixing the CSLR

Reducing the restrictions on accountants providing advice wasn’t the only measure that CA ANZ supported, with Franks adding that the body also backed measures that would see the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort’s (CSLR) costs to advisers lowered and “ensure it’s fair”.

“We have advocated for reform in this area since its operational problems began to emerge, so we’ll be keen to see what the Coalition is proposing here,” she said.

"CA ANZ is also actively engaged in current government consultations on financial advice education standards, the CSLR review and the government's response to the Quality of Advice Review and we look forward to these consultations continuing should the government be re-elected.”

At the event last week, Howarth reiterated his belief that the CSLR was "pretty well a disaster" and said he doesn't agree with the premise of the scheme.

While he outlined that a Coalition would reform the scheme, he told financial services delegates at the event that “I don’t even believe in the CSLR”.

In a Q&A session following his address, he said: “I think the whole thing’s stupid. It's ridiculous ... It's not a go at anyone who's running it … the reality is it shouldn’t have been set up to start with.

“So, we don't want to expand it. That's the last thing we want to do. We want to get rid of it, ultimately, and we want to reduce the cost, until we can do that, for advisers.”

At the Election 2025 event, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor confirmed that the Coalition would “fix the CSLR's costs, making it fair and sustainable”, suggesting that the fee structures were “onerous”.

“We're conscious of the fact that this has been a big impost on your industry,” he told advisers in the room, adding that the cost of supporting the scheme was “preventing people from serving their clients” and “making it harder”.