The two organisations held a development session on Monday with Lester Levy, of the New Zealand Leadership Institute.

There, it was decided that they would embark on a 100 working day plan to get Financial Advice NZ under way.

The first stage of the plan is the responsibility of the chief executives, who will focus on the budget, funding and terms of reference for Financial Advice NZ, as well as a participation plan for consultation.

Then there will be 40 days of consultation with the industry and other interested parties.

IFA president Michael Dowling said it was important to have as many people participating as possible in that consultation process.

“That’s the most critical component and we want to get that started as soon as possible. If we have to extend that to allow everyone to be heard, we will. That is the most time-consuming bit,” he said.

“If we do that job properly the rest will follow on quickly. But if we don’t allow everyone to be heard at the starting point we can end up having to go back and rework which can drag it out at the end.”

Dowling said a key focus would be determining the things that the financial advice industry had in common rather than the differences between the disciplines.

Then through consultation it would be worked out what issues were specific to particular strands of advice.

“Lester was brilliant and really challenged the way we thought to get to the underlying drivers behind financial advice. I don’t think anything radically changed but it has given us clarity and consistency in our messaging,” Dowling said.

The development process begins on Monday.

PAA chairman Bruce Cortesi said after the initial work had been done, the Financial Advice NZ plan would be defined and the associations could work through the operational implications.

The plan will then be presented for approval to the necessary boards.