Weekly Wrap: Some good news to start with

No doubt a theme of 2009 will be adviser regulation, following the passage the Financial Advisers' Bill into law last year.

Sunday, January 11th 2009, 10:13PM

With this in mind it was good to read this story on Good Returns last week reporting that the new government wasn’t planning to overturn the law past in the last stages of the former parliament, and that Commerce Minister Simon Power, intends to take a bipartisan approach to the issue.

This is good news for the advisory industry and helps give it a little more certainty, as opposed to having the threat of further changes being a possibility.

However, one thing which may worry insurance advisers is the suggestion that the Inland Revenue Department is planning crackdown on GST for income earned on risk insurance products, such as income protection and health and disability.

More details of what is being considered are in our Insurance News section.

Last week Spicers released its latest Household Savings Indicies. Withing that report was evidence to show how much bank deposits had increased in the past year, and that there was now a risk to putting more money into this sector.

A key point here is while bank deposits have grown hugely in the past year, there is a need for people to look at other asset classes as rates fall. In this story ,Huge growth in bank deposits comes with warning, Spicers’ Aaron Hing suggests people should be thinking about shares.

It seems this week maybe a busy one for home loan rate changes. Late last week Westpac cut some of its rates and there are suggestions other lenders will follow suit. Added to that an OCR announcement is edging closer and the expectation is that another cut is imminent.

Meanwhile Good Returns has been running updates on bank market share. You can see all the recent stories in the Mortgage Centre. No wrap of events would be complete without mention of the People section. In here we report on a new head for Guardian Trust and a new boss for Russell Investments in New Zealand.

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