Hi

The story of the week for advisers to take note of is this one where SIFA chairman Murray Weatherston argues that regulatory changes may kill part of the advisory industry.

His fear, and it is one echoed elsewhere, is that the burden of change is going to massively reshape the advisory industry. It may over time look like the Australian industry, which is dominated by groups.

There are two other concerns here too. One is that it seems there is an increasing burden coming onto the funds management and life insurance side of the industry. That too may become a huge, deadweight.

The other, and it is one I've heard from a number of advisers, is that there are so many things happening, discussion documents floating around and changes to be contemplated, that it's all become too hard.

Reading documents and writing submissions has a low priority. Rather looking after their business and their clients is more important.

The upshot is change will come, but it mightn't be the best. Hopefully advisers will realise the scope of what is being imposed and will engage in the discussion.

Also making news this week is the appointment of a new chief executive at the Professional Advisers Association. Details here.

And of course the very high acceptance rate for ING's DYF and RIF offer. It's no surprise that more than 95% of investors accepted the offer. It was a good offer. What has bugged me about the story (this week) is that right at the eleventh hour a couple of experienced politicians weighed into the argument threatening all sorts of things including a Private Members Bill.

As you can see from this Blog that wound me up!

My guess is that the Commerce Commission enquiry will drag on and on. It is unlikely to find carte blanche that ING mis-sold these funds. I can't believe the company deliberately went out there and misrepresented the products.

It may find there are cases where some distributors mis-sold funds - that's already happened.

Even if the Commerce Commission found against ING I doubt it would pursue the matter too much as it and its joint venture partner have already coughed up $400 million and tried to remedy the situation.

Also on Good Returns this week we have a feature looking at the Asian markets . A couple of recent stories reported on how a number of managers were bullish on Asia. Here we have an opposing view.

The mortgage world continues to be quiet but we do have all the rates here and also the latest musings from economists on the state of the economy and interest rates here.

We also report on significant changes to one of the bigger mortgage broking groups. It has been forced to review its operations in New Zealand as the broking business has really suffered following the credit crunch and slowing housing market.

Depositrates.co.nz also has plenty of news including an update on South Canterbury Finance and Strategic Finance, along with changes planned by the Reserve Bank to regulate the non-bank sector.

In Insurance News we have an update and reaction to Asteron's product enhancements which have seen it score highly in a range of areas. and an Opinion piece: Where risk comes from.

Finally we do have some new appointments for you this week in People.

Have a great weekend.
Philip

www.goodreturns.co.nz

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27th August 2009, Duxton Hotel, Wellington