The federal government’s reform packages are part of normal operations and should not deter financial advisers from focusing on advice opportunities for clients, an AMP Financial Services executive said.
Speaking at yesterday’s AMP Estate Planning Master Class, AMP Financial Services head of wealth protection sales Graham Burnard said it is easy for industry participants to be distracted by the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms.
“We’ve got the FOFA changes coming down the highway with the probability of opt-in in some form, the financial impact of volume rebates disappearing off platforms, a whole range of things and it’s easy to focus on that,” he said.
“It’s easy to get distracted by groups such as the industry funds or Choice lobbing grenades at our industry and you get frustrated by that and then we’ve got the markets.”
“But all of that is the natural coming and going of the industry and those of you who have been around for awhile know we’ll move through these and there will be another set of challenges.”
He said advisers need to be mindful of other challenges, such as apathy, complacency and ignorance.
“I think there is apathy of those clients who just don’t think it’s important to them, they either don’t have assets or they think their financial circumstances are simple enough that ‘she’ll be right’. Or the referral partners don’t think this is something they need to worry about, that if something happens to their clients it’s not their concern of how their clients will be affected,” he said.
There’s the complacency of those that think they are okay, he said. They have a will and may not be overly concerned how satisfactory it is.
He said there is also a lot of complacency among financial planners that think estate planning is ‘tick a box’.
“Not only does that negate a tremendous amount of advice opportunities it also can mean that a well crafted financial plan can quickly unravel just when a lot of the aspects of it are most important,” he said.
“There’s also ignorance, and that’s ignorance of the important role that [planners] play in this process.”
