$5000 for each child and $100 matching top-ups, in other words, taxpayers' contribution required, right? wouldn't it be more effective to teach kids to learn how to save? and what is opportunity cost mean?

Mr. Cunningham comments that the value of trail books have limited to 0 value for a critical perspective and no one is going to buy a mortgage advice business if it only has a customer list, but if that customer list or database is already owned by a dealer group or on a dealer groups CRM the advisor does not own that information anyway so they don't actually even have a client list to sell, and if that dealer group has their own branded advisers Wouldn't the customer list be given to them to farm.

Westpac remains the only bank of the big four that has chosen to ignore the Commerce Commission’s directive issued last year about adviser clawbacks. These clawbacks, currently 100% at 14 months and 50% at 28 months, have been deemed by the Commerce Commission to hinder those clients changing lenders seeking a better deal on their home loan. Westpac told advisers last year their remuneration model was changing to better align with customer outcomes and regulatory expectations. Why then have they not also changed their clawback policy on adviser commissions? As someone else has pointed out above our head groups are no longer our advocates as they have done nothing to confront Westpac about this. Isn’t the whole point of the aggregator model to fight for your members? I don’t know about other advisers but aside from existing Westpac customers who need to rely on the first home loan scheme to secure a first home it’s increasing hard nowadays to recommend Westpac to anybody else. Westpac’s extra repayment policy is useless, they are frequently uncompetitive with interest rates for existing customers and yet they appear incapable of understanding why they don’t rank as number 1 or 2 currently on advisers list as a good bank for customers to have their home loan with. I think the above will be even more the case after midway through this year. As somebody said to me at a conference a few weeks back, what possible incentive do mortgage advisers have to keep their customers with Westpac from the 2nd of June?