New advice fee consent rules come into effect on Thursday July 1, and a recent survey of financial advisers by CoreData suggests not everyone is necessarily well prepared for the changes.
The new rules require advisers to obtain written consent from clients before they can deduct fees from the client’s account, to set out the services and for the coming 12-month period as well as estimate the fee, and to review ongoing fee arrangements each year.
There are additional new rules relating to the deduction of advice fees from superannuation accounts; the trustee of the fund must receive a copy of (a) the client’s informed consent to paying the fees, and (b) that the fee being charged is in-line with the agreed advice arrangement.
Familiarity breeds contempt or, at least as far as financial advisers are concerned, familiarity breeds dissatisfaction. The longer an adviser has been authorised by a licensee, the less satisfied the adviser is likely to be with that licensee, across a range of measures.
At first glance this might seem a counter-intuitive result. If an adviser is dissatisfied with a licensee the more likely you might think they’d be to switch to a new one. But it seems that advisers are happy to stick with a relationship that’s leaving them increasingly dissatisfied and then bitch about it in research like CoreData’s 2021 Licensee Research.
Among the standout findings from Coredata's 2021 Licensee Research is that advisers at 'top tier' licensees are around 40 per cent less satisfied with their licensee leaders than those at 'medium' and 'large' licensees.