CA ANZ and CPA Australia are actively engaged with the Quality of Advice Review conducted by Ms Michelle Levy. We agree that the current regulatory settings are making the provision of personal financial advice too expensive, and we have supported the recommendations made by Ms Levy to make advice affordable and available to all Australians. Wholesale regulatory reform, while maintaining important consumer protections, is essential and we welcome the government’s commitment to achieve this objective.

CPA Australia and CA ANZ also plan to respond to this inquiry as part of a submission to be lodged by the Joint Advice Working Group (JAWG) and have participated in the recent media release1 on this Bill made by the JAWG. We encourage the Parliament to progress these urgent reforms as a priority.

Our major concern about the DBFO Bill concerns Schedule 1. These include:

• that the proposed Section 99FA of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1994 is an inappropriate solution to the payment of personal advice fees from superannuation funds because, in our view, it creates too many risks for the trustees of APRA regulated superannuation funds
• believe product providers should be allowed to have their own ongoing advice fee form but should also be required to accept the form that the Minister approves
• concerned about the large criminal penalties for breaching administrative matters around Financial Services Guides. For example, two years jail is proposed for a failure to record changes to website information. We suggest a civil penalty would be more appropriate here