Another milestone reached - the road to full licensing lies ahead

• Tweet

Another milestone in the journey to full licensing has been reached after the deadline for advisers to link themselves to a financial advice provider passed last week.

Wednesday, June 23rd 2021, 6:23AM 3 Comments

by Matthew Martin

Financial Advice New Zealand (FANZ) chief executive Katrina Shanks says she's pleased the vast majority of the organisation's members are now linked to a financial advice provider (FAP) and that the work put in by FANZ to help its members get across the line has been worthwhile.

Shanks says apart from a couple of members who thought they had linked themselves to a FAP but had not, "...everybody seems to be relatively comfortable that they are on the register".

'We had a couple of phone calls after the event, but we worked those out.

"There is still time to contact the companies office and make the required changes...they will have to work through the process of deregistration and can't just do it all straight away."

Shanks says that on the whole FANZ members understood what was required of them.

"We have communicated endlessly about the need to link yourself but we are glad to see how many of our members have done this."

She says FANZ won't know exactly how many members have dropped off until the end of this month, "but it will be very few".

"This process was relativity simple, obviously the fifteenth of March wasn't the end date in terms of licensing - now we move into the full licensing process and have two years to do this, but that time will go very quickly."

Shanks says FANZ knows some organisations who are ready to apply for a full license and she encourages them to "...get it done and dusted".

"The sooner you apply for the full licence the sooner you can put all of this behind you."

Overall, she says it's been pleasing to see members were prepared for the change and understood the requirements.

"We've had a look at a lot of members websites to see what they were looking like and it's fantastic to see so many advisers have met those requirements, made changes to their websites and put a lot of thought into them as well."

Shanks says FANZ has been focused on delivering for its members since before the new legislation was rolled out by supplying significant resources, booklets, the Ready, Set, Go webinars and having a hotline available for advisers to help them navigate through the changes.

"Like all good professional bodies, they lead their sector, and adding value for them [members] is what we are here to do.

"We are now preparing workbooks and resources for the full licensing process, so when they are ready to apply for a full licence we will be ready."

Tags: FANZ FAP financial advisers FSLAA Katrina Shanks

Comments from our readers

Sign In to add your comment