Shadow assistant treasurer and shadow minister for financial services, Luke Howarth, has said he would be open to considering how accountants could provide some form of financial advice and would also look to reduce the number of regulations currently imposed on the accounting profession.
Speaking in a recent episode of the ifa Show, Howarth was asked about proposals from industry groups to allow accountants to play a greater role in financial advice, in a similar way to the new class of adviser (NCAs) model unveiled by the Labor government.
The SMSF Association stated last month that accountants could be given a defined advice role which would help consumers access the advice they need and when they need it from their choice of trusted adviser.
SMSFA chief executive Peter Burgess said given the government’s focus on creating a new adviser to provide safe and simple advice, it remained a mystery why the role of other professional advisers such as accountants had been overlooked.
“It was our contention that the Quality of Advice Review neglected the significant role accountants can play in addressing the growing advice gap, and the government is perpetuating this oversight,” Burgess said.
Speaking on the podcast, Howarth said the SMSFA was on the right track with some potentially good changes.
“At the end of the day, I respect accountants significantly. My experience with accountants is that they’ve provided good advice and they’re often the people you go to if you want to look at setting up a self-managed fund.”
“They’re qualified people that know tax law inside out and so giving a little bit of advice, I don’t fear that at all from accountants and I think it probably should be looked at.”
Accountants were previously able to provide certain types of limited financial advice under the accountants’
The limited AFSL regime, which replaced the exemption, has largely been deemed unworkable by the accounting profession with the number of accountants operating under the regime continuing to dwindle.
Howarth also labelled the Labor government’s approach to introducing reforms for the accounting profession as “atrocious”.
“This was lazy policy done by someone who doesn’t understand or hasn’t run a small business,” he said.
Howarth said he would also like to see greater collaboration between financial advisers and accountants.
“Financial advisers shouldn’t fear accountants. Accountants are good people, they’re well qualified and we want to try to get more people into financial advice as well,” he said.
“There’s plenty of work for them at the moment. We want to reduce their regulations so let’s work together.”
Personally, I don’t have a problem with accountants providing advice on SMSFs, so long and the same compliance requirements apply.