AMA: I'm Phil Anderson, GM Policy, Advocacy & Standards at FAAA, Ask Me Anything!

Thanks again ShwetaM1. I will say at the outset that I am a big fan of standardisation and technology enabled solutions. This should apply broadly across the financial services industry. It might be that we need some kind of data standard, so that we are all speaking with the same language. I think that this needs to cover issues like fee consent forms and third party authority forms.

Having mandatory standardised forms is one thing. Ideally however the best outcome is to do this in a technology enabled way. I would like to see a world where clients can provide third party authorities through an app on their phone and can dot the same thing for fee consent. This should be backed up by straight through processing, where the message is sent to all relevant product providers. We can only dream about what might be possible in the future, however I know that there are a lot of firms who are already working on solutions that are not that far off.

The need for oversight of advice fees goes back to the sole purpose test and has been followed through by APRA and ASIC since the Royal Commission. We need to accept that the sole purpose test has an important role to play, however it has got out of control in many respects. We do not support trustees reviewing SoAs and believe that there should be a better way of ensuring that the advice fees are appropriate and align with the sole purpose test. We have also argued strongly that it should not apply to clients in retirement phase who have already met a condition of release and can chose to withdraw their money whenever they chose to do so. Why should trustees have any role in this case?

It is difficult to avoid the fact that trustees do have an obligation in this space, however there needs to be a better, more efficient and less intrusive way.