Advice association merger up to membersBY HARRISON WORLEY | THURSDAY, 29 AUG 2019 12:42PMWhether Australia's peak bodies in financial advice merge is a matter for members to decide, according to Financial Planning Association of Australia chief executive Dante De Gori. Related News |
Editor's Choice
Australia, UK partner to procure well-regulated financial markets
Following its inaugural meeting in September 2025, the second UK-Australia Joint Financial Regulatory Forum took place this week, with Australia remaining vocal about placing greater emphasis on governance and asset valuation of private markets.
Count takes 30% stake in Brisbane advice firm
Count has agreed to acquire a 30% stake in Brisbane-based accounting and financial advice firm Apiary Financial, continuing its push to expand its equity partnership network while reporting stronger first-quarter earnings.
Audit quality continues to fall short: ASIC
The corporate regulator has called for improvements in audit quality and financial reporting after its latest surveillance found companies, including superannuation funds, are still not getting the fundamentals right.
ETFs entering 3.0 era: JPMAM
JPMAM believes thematic ETFs may become a thing of the past as actively managed ETFs become more prevalent.
Further Reading
Products
Expert Feed
When geopolitics becomes a portfolio risk
Geopolitics is back - again - and Australian investors can no longer treat it as distant background noise.
Does association membership still matter?
With all the changes the advice sector has experienced in recent years, such as regulatory reform and increased education and professional standards ...
Digital assets and where they stand in 2026
So far in 2026 digital assets have captured the headlines largely for the wrong reasons, but that doesn't tell the full story.
Rethinking default design in a changing market environment
The evolution underway in the US DC system highlights the value of periodically reassessing default design assumptions.
Featured Profile
Jacqueline Fernley
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
ARC POINT OCIO PTY LTD
ARC POINT OCIO PTY LTD
Jacqueline Fernley is a self-confessed nerd, a market animal and as of this year, her own boss. Riddhima Talwani writes.
The Financial Standard podcast Tune in each week as we discuss the latest developments in Australia's wealth management industry. |  |
The viability of both associations and their credibility is now on the line. To be regarded as a profession, these associations will need to STOP taking money from the very companies whose political influence has undermined every adviser and their business and consumers. Against a backdrop of Royal Commissions, questionable behaviour in fact illegal from the very institutions that sought to hurt the advice industry, incompetance from Canberra, who sought to only favor the very banks, life insurers, industry funds that would do us advisers harm, these associations essentially sat back and asked us to simply put up with the nonsense. Their utterances and comments and suggestions to regulators fell largely on deaf ears. Their incentive was selling courses to us that have proved to be of little value in the schem of things and we all now need to go back to school to have a business while 16 advisers have taken their ow lives and we find according to the RC that the regulators were not regulating, in fact according to many a news article, they were in bed with the swill that are the members of the financial services council. Yes do merge. With a new over arching FASEA code, new qualifications post 2023, much like the accounting and legal profession, will we need to be part of an association at all?. Yes to professionalism. Not with the current approach though which is visionless in construct and has no place for a profession such as financial planning. For the sake of the industry, our profession and consumers whose best interests we are to uphold, the current leadership needs to move on..