Can the New Zealand Life Insurance afford further shrinkage? With AIA performing so poorly options to insure will fall to just Partners, Asteron ( Acenda) and Chubb for mainstream Life Insurers. Of course there is PSP but they have a very small, targeted client group.

This is great news indeed, well done AIA. I hope you were able to solve the tax treatment which plagued this cornerstone product.

Fei , trustees still hold large of money not yet refund fully.

There is no doubt the obligation is on the insurer who the contract is with. Clearly it would be prudent for an adviser to assist once given clear information by an insurer to assist with the communication but to extend this further. For an insurer to attempt to slide this onto an advisers plate is abdication. The adviser can not change the contract.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the fundamental flaw in the legislation came about partly through the event that Murray mentions, and also through the negligence of the Select Committee in ignoring the single most cited recommendation in all the submissions (over 34% from memory) of drawing a distinction between product sales and financial advice. To add to their misdemeanour, the Committee then added a paragraph to the Bill confirming that recommendation of one product only constituted financial advice - or words to that effect. The inherent conflict of interest lies in an individual retained by a Class 4 licensee being required to adhere to a code of conduct that requires prioritisation of client interests. To expect a product sales person to subordinate their contractual obligation to their employer is unrealistic, unworkable, and unreasonable. To emphasise, I have no issue with a product provider marketing and selling their own products - but not behind the opaque veil of legislation intended to govern financial advice. If MBIE ever gets around to review FSLAA, Financial Advisers, FANZ, and all other interested stakeholders should mount a fully-funded intensive campaign to persuade our employees in Wellington to remove class 4 licensees from FSLAA, and replace their obligations within an amended CoFI Act.