Commission, designations, qualifications on review hitlist

The Financial Advisers Act review's issues paper was released today, seeking feedback on a broad range of topics.

Commerce Minister Paul Goldsmith said some of the key questions included whether consumers understood adviser regulation and whether it had unduly reduced access to advice.

The issues paper says regulation is necessary because consumers might otherwise find it hard to determine the quality of advisers. Bad advice was sometimes only evident in the event of a market correction and could leave people worse off than no advice at all.

But the paper identifies a number of issues with regulation as it stands at present.