Wednesday 20th of August 2008

Wow, it’s not often you hear a minister give a passionate speech at a conference, let alone a financial planning conference. But that’s exactly what Commerce Minister Lianne Dalziel did at the PIS Conference this week. While she shared the platform on adviser regulation with the bosses of the IFA and PAA, Dalziel spent a good chunk of her opening getting stuck into EUFA. This was fascinating. While EUFA is a good initiative and can potentially help investors, there has been a view building for some time that its MO is way off track. I know this from talking to other journalists and also being a recipient of its regular email press releases. The organisation is one of the most prolific emitter of press releases I know of at the moment and much of what it sends out is highly, emotionally-charged allegations. Very few of these releases ever make it into print, which says something. What is more important is that EUFA has clearly pissed off the minister big time, when really it should be bending over backwards to build relationships with her and other officials. Dalziel, as I say, was extremely passionate in her criticism. Her main beef being that EUFA claims she has called people who have been caught up in the finance company and Blue Chip mess “greedy, stupid and naïve.” Dalziel absolutely riles against this allegation. She says she has never used the first two terms, but has called some of these investors naive. There she is right. She also makes a few other sound points. The government can’t take risk out of the market. Without risk there is no return. Do we really want to have nothing but government bonds to invest in? She also says EUFA could actually be helping its members, rather than carrying on like it is. She says there are things EUFA can do to help people such as using the Securities Commission and the ombudsmen schemes, but, she says, it’s not doing that. I hope EUFA take this as a major wake-up call and changes its tactics. Clearly they aren’t working.