The Financial Planning Association (FPA) has released draft principles
designed to assist members in managing potential or perceived conflicts
of interest. A six month consultation period has begun, with FPA
members invited to comment by Friday 28 October 2005.

The taskforce has adopted as the key principle that FPA members have a
primary obligation to provide advice which is in the interest of the
client.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, the Hon Chris Pearce MP, has released a package of 25 proposed refinements to improve the operation of the Financial Services Regulation (FSR) framework.

The package of proposed refinements is based on feedback received from consumers, industry participants and their representatives, as well as the report provided to the Government by the Financial Sector Advisory Council.

The proposed refinements are intended to improve the quality of disclosure to consumers and provide greater certainty to industry participants as to how to comply with their obligations under the law.

The package includes changes to the following:

• drafting of Financial Service Guides;
• Statements of Advice;
• Product Disclosure Statement;
• Oral disclosure;
• General Advice Warning;
• Basic Deposit Products;
• General Insurance Products;
• Retail/Wholesale Client Distinction;
• General Advice Definition;
• Authorised Representatives;
• Staff training; and
• non-cash payment facilities.

In response, ASIC has announced that it will set up 8 projects to:

• issue further guidance on Statements of Advice (SOAs), including
  releasing a model SOA (discussion before refinement proposal 2.2 in the
  Government’s proposal paper)
• issue guidance and/or relief about compliance with the general
  advice warning requirements where there is an ongoing relationship
  between the adviser and the retail client (refinement proposal 5.1)
• issue guidance and/or relief to deal with inconsistencies in the
  general advice warning requirements applying to product issuers in
  their advertisements (refinement proposal 5.2)
  issue guidance and/or relief to clarify that advisers do not
  necessarily provide personal advice merely because they have some personal information about a retail client (refinement proposal 10.2)
• issue further guidance and/or relief to promote the provision of basic online calculators (refinement proposal 10.3)
• issue guidance and/or relief on the authorisation requirements for
  product arranging agents of Australian general insurance issuers
  (refinement proposal 12.2)
• undertake a discrete review of ASIC Policy Statement 146 Licensing:
  Training of financial product advisers on adviser minimum
  qualifications as it applies to advice about basic deposit products and
  related non-cash payment facilities (refinement proposal 13), and
• issue guidance and/or relief to deal with the unintended
  application of the non-cash payment facility definition to certain
  kinds of facilities (refinement proposal 14).

UPDATE 13 May
ASIC has released further details of its refinement projects.