Clarification offered on Financial Advice NZ questions

A Q&A detailing the closure of the IFA and PAA, posted on both organisations’ websites, as an early draft that had been superseded, the IFA’s president says.

Tuesday, June 14th 2016, 6:00AM

by Susan Edmunds

The document was posted as part of the launch of the proposal for Financial Advice New Zealand, a new professional body for financial advisers.

But it had some scratching their heads because it told members they would be asked to vote for or against the formation of Financial Advice New Zealand in July, after which it would take 12 months for the organisation to get off the ground.

The Q&A said once the vote was made in support of the idea, the IFA and PAA would start proceedings to close.

That is in contrast to the message from IFA and PAA last week that members were voting to merely give the two organisations the mandate to start working together to develop the new body, and that all three could continue to exist if that was what members wanted.

IFA president Michael Dowling said the site had been loaded with an early version which had been change.

“There are a number of remits we need to go forward,” he said. “The remit members will be asked to vote on is the mandate to set up a new body. To close the existing bodies there would have to be a different remit put forward.”

He said the intent of the new body was to be an overarching organisation that more advisers would subscribe to, so it would appeal to more than just the IFA and PAA membership.

“If we get it right it may be that members say this does everything we want and we are happy to agree to close off these bodies in favour of the new one. But we are not asking them to agree to that at the moment.”

He said it would be foolish to suggest IFA and PAA closed until it was clear that the new body was working.

The Q&A would be corrected on both sites, he said.

Tags: IFA PAA