Senate recommends immediate adviser bans following "bitter harvest"BY ALEX BURKE | TUESDAY, 15 MAR 2016 12:47PMThe Senate Economics References Committee has recommended legislative amendments which would allow ASIC to immediately suspend a financial adviser if "egregious misconduct" is suspected. Related News |
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Blake Briggs
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Since becoming chief executive, Blake Briggs has renewed the Financial Services Council's influence, expanded the membership base, and strengthened its policy and advocacy credentials. Karren Vergara writes.
I totally agree, but there is one major group of professionals conveniently missing from this article, Accountants who groomed clients to enter into these flawed product for exactly the same reasons as some advisers did, but all we hear is the carping and wining about advisers. Time to be honest about this sorry situation.
So it's the continuing case of sheeting home the entire blame for financial product failures - which the agribusiness schemes were - to the people at the coalface of the product-consumer transaction - financial advisers.
As Bob said, accountants who recommended these products seem to escape any retribution for their actions.
How about the Senate consider giving the power to ASIC to immediately suspend dodgy products from the market to prevent all and sundry from the impact of their eventually failures?
Of course, that would mean looking beyond the 'easy' option of blaming all the ills of the financial services industry on advisers - and it appears the Coalition's masters (read, FSC) and the Labor's masters (read, Industry Superfunds) won't be letting that happen anytime soon.
God forbid that they may have to acknowledge that their members have contributed in a major way to the ongoing debacles that will continue to dog this industry until they do.