More on Stobo...and something quite different

Friday, December 3rd 2004, 9:55AM 3 Comments

It is clear the Stobo tax report has created a huge amount of interest amongst investors, advisers and fund managers.
My earlier Blog on the subject has drawn out a few questions - some of these I have run past Craig Stobo. Craig has kindly offered to answer these questions.
The Blog, the questions and the answers are here.

The other topic is adviser regulation. Someone posed the question today: Has the taskforce been set up to fail?

Time will tell the answer. What is clear is that there is still some major upset at the make-up of the taskforce. I understand that there is still some fierce lobbying going on behind the scenes to have a certain group represented on the taskforce.
For my money I was slightly surprised at the make up of the taskforce. But it is far better than some of the names which were bandied around while officials put the group together.
To date I have been totally underwhelmed with the taskforce's comms, and events this week showed MED have little idea about key players in the industry. This isn't a new theme. It surfaced during the establishment of the taskforce too.
Coming back to the question I posed at the start. No. I don't believe Margaret Wilson set the taskforce up to fail. However she is not the only stakeholder in this event.

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Comments from our readers

On 3 December 2004 at 2:47 pm Mike said:

I can't answer the question on whether the task force has been set up to fail. But I have got to wonder what the FPIA are proposing to present to the task force. The FPIA President stated members have already and will continue to be consulted. I ain't been consulted nor do I know of any other member/s who have been consulted. It gets better, the FPIA Board Members don't know what the FPIA are going to present to the task force. To top things off both the President and Board are not sure whether they will be meeting with the task force or presenting a written submission.

On 4 December 2004 at 1:53 am Mike said:

My point was the FPIA President and Board have been on record as stating the members will be consulted on what the FPIA proposes to present to the task force. The annual report presents a done deal. The board has decided to adopt the self regulating organization model. The model has merits as it allows advisers who are part of distribution organizations who are not necessarily members of the FPIA to use their distribution organization to become a SRO. The likes of the Mortgage Brokers Assn, Share Brokers Assn, SIFA, AMP, AXA/Spicers, Money Managers, Tower/Goldridge, Life Brokers Assn, Gareth Morgan, Portfolio Group can retain their own identity and standards under the common umbrella of Self Regulatory Organizations. The plus side will be Advisers can at least cherry pick which organization they may wish to join, however a downside could be father fragmenting the professions public voice.

On 4 December 2004 at 6:52 am Philip said:

I would have thought one of the first groups the Taskforce spoke to was the FPIA - they are afterall the largest body representing advisers in New Zealand.

I felt the FPIA outlined its preferred option well in its recently-released annual report. The question Mike is what do you think of those proposals?