Too few advisers engaging with task force: Becker

Have your say on the Task Force - or be prepared to go on stress leave and see the value of your business collapse.

Thursday, June 2nd 2005, 6:54AM

by Rob Hosking

That was the stark message ING national distribution manager Wayne Becker gave financial advisers at a recent series of adviser road shows.

TToo few advisers are taking any interest at all in the Task Force on Financial Intermediaries, which released an options paper last week on the future path of regulation of the industry.

He points to what happened in Australia when the federal government brought in a new regulatory regime.

Few financial advisers bothered to engage in that process, either, he says. They either did not think it would affect them or they just thought it was too hard.

“The year the changes came in there was a five-fold increase in the number of disability insurance claims from financial advisers, and 70% of the increase was due to anxiety and depression related to the stress of the new rules,” says Becker.

One of the reasons many New Zealand financial advisers may not be bothering to involve themselves with the issue is that they expect to retire soon – a survey conducted last year by ING showed half the advisers expect to sell their business within five years.

Yet there was a similar attitude amongst Australian advisers. What happened though was that they did not familiarise themselves with the new rules and change their businesses accordingly – which meant their business was not worth as much as they expected when they came to sell it.

For that reason it would pay for more advisers to have their say and try to influence the outcome of the Task Force’s deliberations, he says.

“This is the best chance – it might be the only chance – you will get to influence where your industry is going,” he says “I can’t stress hard enough that this is the last time you are going to get a chance to have your say on this.

"Like it or not, someone who knows nothing about our industry, nothing about how you run your business and nothing about your clients is going to be passing legislation which will have a profound impact on you.”

For more go to www.assetmagazine.co.nz

Rob Hosking is a Wellington-based freelance writer specialising in political, economic and IT related issues.

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