Firstly, welcome back to the New Year – we hope everyone has managed to get a relaxing break in over the holiday period and is ready for an interesting 2019.
I suspect this year will be all about responding to the impact of, and implementing the changes from, the review of the Financial Advisers Act. The shape and cost of these changes is now clear. There will be a raft of decisions that adviser firms and individual advisers will need to make over the coming months.
A discussion document and a two-page summary of the proposed costs of the new regime have been promulgated by MBIE and are available here.
The two-page summary is a helpful document providing examples for a one, five and hundred person adviser firm. It covers both the levy to be a financial adviser (or a firm that employs nominated representatives) and the costs for the new licensing regime.
For current RFAs, who may well have upskilling requirements to operate as financial advisers under the new regime, the TripleA in 2018 put together a scholarship in partnership with Strategi to help support the costs associated with this upskilling. We will be promoting this to TripleA member firms over the coming weeks and further information on these scholarships can be found here. You can email me if you have additional questions.
As I draft this newsletter, we are expecting the Reserve Bank/FMA report on the major insurance companies to be issued at some stage in January. We understand it may well be more critical than the one they issued late last year on the banking sector. We are waiting with interest to see what it says and what implications it may have for the sector. The TripleA will be co-ordinating any response with a range of industry bodies and adviser associations. I’m sure there will be more on this in the next newsletter.
In terms of PI, we understand that there may be a price increase in the coming 2019/20 FY which reflects general cost increases across the insurance sector. We don’t at this stage have any indication of the level of any increase. AON will be presenting to the Board at their next meeting in March where this will be discussed I’m sure.
This edition’s Board bio is for Jeremy Cole who was recently welcomed to the Board and will be well known to many of our members.
Wayne Smith,
CEO