The IFA and PAA have revealed plans to work together to develop a new organisation, Financial Advice New Zealand.

PAA president Bruce Cortesi said more needed to be done to promote the value that financial advice and advisers could offer New Zealanders. He said, with the industry structure as it is, that was not being done.

Dowling said he had come to realise that it was not enough for the IFA to promote its own members. Consumers could not understand the difference between financial advisers as a whole and IFA advisers, he said. More work was needed to change consumers’ perception of the industry.

Cortesi and Dowling said it was hoped that Financial Advice New Zealand would end up with more members than the just under 2000 who are currently members of the PAA and IFA.

But Dowling said it not possible yet to say what the structure of Financial Advice New Zealand might be. Until both the IFA and PAA had received a vote of approval from members, it had not been appropriate to delve to that level, he said.

“We both had to be clear we don’t have a mandate from our existing memberships to spend money on developing an organisation, even researching it.”

He said the IFA and PAA had wanted to take a blank slate and look at what the organisations could look like in 10 years, whether that was significantly different from where they currently were, and what steps were needed to take that.

“This is bigger than just our organisation. If we understand what we are looking to achieve, it doesn’t have to be exclusive. We don’t know yet it fi it would mean the PAA and IFA have to close down. It’s just what can we look like in 10 years, if we want to move to that now we might do that but if we need six years to think and develop that’s what we will do.”

Concerns raised about the status of CFP – a qualification administered in New Zealand by IFA – were valid, he said. CFPs were as few as 1% of all advisers.

“That’s a legitimate concern to have. But it is not our intent to have any group fall by the wayside. One of the things we’ve got to look at is how do we protect the interests of all advisers, how do we ensure specific areas are still catered for?