Financial services licensee SMSF Partners is offering advisers and accountants servicing the superannuation space the ability to operate under a limited licence that will allow them to provide strategic advice.
"We've got the AFSL [Australian financial services licence] and we're in a position to offer the advisers a sub-licence under us," SMSF Partners principal Amreeta Abbott told InvestorDaily.
"Under the arrangement, advisers will be provided with a limited licence for superannuation, including self-managed, but no financial products in terms of investments. So anything that crosses the line into the Corporations Act inside superannuation - we cover them," she said.
"So we provide them with a letter of advice dealing with reserves, pensions, borrowing, contributions, rollovers, death benefits, and all of those types of things. We would make sure they have documentation support."
Advisers and accountants looking to use the service still need to gain a specialist qualification in the superannuation area itself.
"Once they have that we send it to an independent assessor and then it goes off to ASIC for approval," Abbott said.
The charge for a sub-licence will be calculated on a flat-fee basis as opposed to a percentage of profit.
"The flat fee gives practitioners comfort because they know if the market changes they can actually properly budget for their SMSF (self-managed superannuation fund) division if they wanted to build it," Abbott said.
The emphasis for the move is on the provision of strategic advice in the superannuation arena.
"The difference between SMSF Partners and a dealer group is that a dealer group is dealing in product and we're more about managing clients' affairs in such a way that the strategy always comes first," Abbott said.
