FPA releases new toolkit for video SOAs

The SOAP Box Set covers topics such as the ease in which they can create a video of their advice meeting which can be provided as an SOA, as well as real-life examples of video SOAs covering various scenarios such as pre-retirement planning and life risk advice.

The video series is the result of an extensive consultation process between the FPA and members, consumers, regulators, lawyers, compliance experts, and technology providers to work on a paperless SOA aimed at reducing compliance costs and increasing efficiency while also delivering advice that clients can better understand.

The series features discussions led by the FPA’s head of policy, strategy and innovation, Ben Marshan, and founder of The Cyber Collective Australia, Fraser Jack.

FPA chief executive Sarah Abood said a lot of what drives up the cost of financial advice is the amount of background work, information investigation, and time spent by the financial planner on what is required to be included in the SOA.

“Not only that, the SOA ends up becoming a document that clients find difficult to read and ends up clouding the actual advice being given to them. Any efforts made to make advice more efficient and usable by clients is a critical step forward for the profession,” said Ms Abood.

Mr Marshan said the SOA requirements came during a time when paper was the only option available to planners.

With video conferencing now a normal part of daily life, Mr Marshan said he hopes the series will showcase alternative avenues of providing a compliant SOA under the current legislation.

“We are still seeing financial planners put together paper-based SOAs that stretch between 80 to 100 pages long,” he said.

“The idea behind the Statement of Advice Project is to push the boundaries of finding the most effective way of providing advice to clients while also keeping within ASIC’s regulations.”

SMSF Association chief executive Johan Maroney has also discussed the potential benefits of a video SOA previously.

Speaking on a conference panel, Mr Maroney said that statements of advice are hardly read by anybody and that this information could be delivered in a more valuable form.

“[For example], you could have a video recording of the Zoom chat where you talked about it and a five- or 10-minute summary [of what was discussed]. That would be far more valuable record of what was said and understood,” Mr Maroney explained.

“[That could be] the primary evidence of the conversation that happened, and then the signing of the documents would just be a formality that doesn’t need to stand on its own because it’s being supported by the primary evidence.”