Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand, CPA Australia, the Institute of Public Accountants and the SMSF Association request that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services accept this supplementary submission in relation to the above inquiry. This brief submission deals with three issues that come about because of evidence that the Committee received on 4 & 5 October.

• As we have expressed in our previous submission to this inquiry we are of the view that so called accountants certificates should cease to exist. If the committee were to reject this recommendation and to propose that penalties should be imposed on accountants, as suggested by ASIC, then this area of the law must be significantly reformed and simplified so that accountants, product providers, financial advisers and investors can easily understand an accountants’ obligations and responsibilities. We do not support an increase in ASIC remit in this respect.
• We refer to comments made by Senator Scarr to ASIC representatives on 4th October regarding the proposal to increase the wholesale investor thresholds. We consider increases to these wealth thresholds to be vitally important.
• Self certification concerns - we think this is an argument for increasing the thresholds from their current amounts so that the impact of being classed as a wholesale investor is lessened and think it is vital for such clients to acknowledge in writing that they are happy to decline all retail client protections as recommended by the Quality of Advice Review.