Hi, you may recall this old saying from the past –
‘IF YOU ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU ALWAYS DID, YOU WILL ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU HAVE ALWAYS GOT…’
It is certainly relevant to the Advice community after 9 years of hellish treatment by the former Coalition Government, we must learn from this period, change what we can change to avoid past mistakes and move onto a new regime.
With a new Government in power, we have a window of opportunity to capitalize upon, it is not a time to be modest or unassertive about the AIOFP achievements over the past 5 years.
We must however start with issues that hurt but we can change –
- Our Industries professional image with all sides of Politics and capturing subsequent political grunt when it matters.
- The dilution of our political power by having too many Associations scrambling for attention and relevance from their members and Canberra.
- The past 3 dominant Associations who have not acted in the best interests of the Advice community and need to retract for different reasons.
One of the AIOFP greatest achievements has been to regularly email and educate all Politicians over the past 4 years with facts about our industry. The real causes of Product failure, AFCA miniscule consumer complaints about Advisers, the ASIC 827 Paper on Consumer views of their Adviser, the draconian LIF/FASEA legislation, the ridiculous compliance regime and the real Agenda of Frydenberg/O’Dywer/Hume to exterminate Advisers have given a different perspective in Canberra.
Our Board decided in 2019 to directly oppose the Government, we were not going to be sycophants or care whether Hume attended our conferences or not, we were determined to continue acting in the best interests of the Advice community. We produced a video with a document detailing what we believed to be the Government agenda to starve and intimidate Advisers out of the industry in favor of Institutional Digital advice solutions. We threatened and delivered on our marginal seat strategy to unseat Liberal Politicians, we are pleased with the results. We blocked Hume’s attempt to modify Comm Hayne’s CSLR legislation in the Senate by producing documents detailing Frydenberg’s acceptance of Hayne’s original recommendations for the ALP and cross benches to act upon.
We think our greatest achievement is to change Canberra’s view of the Advice community and demonstrate that we can stand up politically and future Politicians will think twice about taking us on again. Imagine the potential power if the whole Advice community stood together?
The current 14 Associations is considered a poor repartee in Canberra, this must change. Our political opposition to the Morrison Government obviously won us ‘brownie points’ with the ALP who are now obviously in power….we have strong access to decision makers.
The final issue is the relevance of the 3 past Associations that once dominated our industry and supposedly represented Advisers best interests in Canberra. The FSC represents Institutions, the FPA represents consumers and the only hope was the AFA but they sided with FSC/FPA over LIF and FASEA. Many think these 3 are no longer relevant to the Advice community for different reasons.
We are seeking members in each State, Territory and regional area to sit on a local Member panel to meet on a regular basis to recruit new members and advise the AIOFP Board of member needs and suggestions going forward. Please advise if you can assist, the time commitment is up to your local committee and personal circumstances.
Click here for our latest promotional flyer to send out far and wide in the Advice community, nothing like a bit of nostalgia to get attention! […..he has too much hair to be me.]
Regards.
Peter Johnston | Executive Director
Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals
Suite 1211, 1 Queens Road, Melbourne VIC 3004
P 1800 111 203, d 03 9863 7574, m 0418 857 621
www.aiofp.net.au | Download my business card
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