Opposition to merger mounts

Two financial planners are circulating letters to members of the Association of Investment Advisers and Financial Planners (IAFP) questioning the proposed merger of the IAFP and the Investment and Insurance Advisers Association (IIAA).

Monday, August 10th 1998, 12:00AM

Two financial planners are circulating letters to members of the Association of Investment Advisers and Financial Planners (IAFP) questioning the proposed merger of the IAFP and the Insurance and Investment Advisers Association (IIAA).
Former IAFP board member Craig Myles says the merger proposal "would not protect and promote professional financial planning."
A better option, in his view, would be forming a strategic alliance with the Financial Planning Association (FPA) in Australia.
Myles admits his proposal is throwing a spanner in the works, however he believes all the merger options haven't been explored.

He says members are being told the only option is a merger with the IIAA, otherwise their fees are going to increase substantially.
"A strategic alliance with the Australian FPA to form a new organisation is an option that now needs serious consideration," he says.
IAFP chairman Denys Wright says the FPA are quite happy to support the IAFP in New Zealand, but only at a reasonably low level.
"A strategic alliance is quite nice," he says, "however I don't think it would solve the problems (the IAFP in) New Zealand has at the moment, which is basically too few members in the association."
He questions the strategic alliance with the FPA option and says if it was such a good idea why didn't the previous board (of which Myles was a member) endorse it?
Myles says it is an option that was being explored by the previous board.
Auckland planner, and long term IAFP member Alan Milton, is also understood to have circulated a letter to CFP members raising some more technical questions over the constitution of the proposed new organisation.
One of the key issues for the IAFP/IIAA merger is the need for the CFP Board of Standards in the United States to sanction transferring the IAFP's CFP licence to a new organisation.
Wright says the IAFP has yet to formally hear back from the CFP on this matter. However the executive of the CFP is recommending its board agrees to the transfer "subject to several matter being agreed to over the next six months", Wright says.
He won't detail those matters at this stage.

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