There is a growing body of advisers providing services free from the conflicts of the past, and others could learn from them.
If ever we needed solid evidence that the financial planning industry has a lot more work to do before it can reasonably call itself a true profession, we need go no further than the ABC’s Four Corners program of March 4, 2013. The program presented a litany of shameful scams and financial disasters in the Australian-managed investment scheme sector. It seems that many of these schemes and related products were sold by highly qualified financial advisers, including practising accountants, in return for handsome commissions and other incentives.
My hope has always been that leaders of the aspiring profession of financial planning would guide its participants in a sometimes-difficult journey of self-regulation and genuine reform, building on the minimum standards established by the law. Indeed, it is our willingness to undertake such a journey that distinguishes a true profession from an industry lobby group, which simply follows and defends the often conflicting commercial interests of its noisiest and most powerful members.
What has been for some planners a tiresome, annoying, costly and repetitive debate since the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms were first proposed some three years ago, has presented for others a positive opportunity to examine exactly what it means to be a member of a true profession. As a result, there is now a growing body of planners who are profitably offering their services without the remuneration conflict that continues to beset and hold back the rest of the industry from achieving genuine professional status.
These planners have gained a previously unknown sense of freedom, certainty, independence, unqualified client trust and professional satisfaction which their colleagues in the rest of the industry – who are unwilling to take the journey – can only observe with considerable envy.
The full version of this article was originally published in the April 2013 edition of Professional Planner.