Rice Warner welcomes the opportunity to contribute to ASIC’s Consultation Paper 332 Promoting access to affordable advice for consumers.

Early last year, we were commissioned by the FSC to analyse the financial advice regime and to recommend areas of improvement. We issued our final report to the FSC in October, split into four areas:

• The broad need for financial advice across the community, and at different life stages.
• The value of financial advice.
• The current regime and the need for change.
• A proposed model.

Following publication of the report, the FSC and Rice Warner met with many industry bodies to discuss the findings. Our report was well received, particularly the suggested changes to the current regime. We stressed that these were set out to provide a framework for discussion and needed to be considered in more detail.

ASIC’s review provides the opportunity to do this.