It was introduced last week for its first reading and is unlikely to pass this parliamentary term.

A number of alterations were made from the exposure draft that was put out for consultation – most notably to remove the contentious “financial advice representative” category.

This had been criticised as confusing and potentially misleading for customers who might not understand the difference between an independent financial adviser and a financial advice representative working for a financial advice provider and limited to a certain set of products.

The bill replaces the FAR designation with “nominated representatives”, who have the same restrictions on the way they operate. QFE advisers will generally become nominated representatives and some larger financial advice groups may look to become FARs with representatives working for them.

PAA chief executive Rod Severn had been highly critical of the FAR designation. He was pleased with the change.

“It’s absolutely an improvement.  'Nominated representative' is still a bit of a nebulous term but it’s certainly better than financial advice representative, which was going to confuse everybody.

“At the end of the day I don’t think it matters what people are called, how they act is the important piece. Provided the public understand the difference that nominated representatives can only give advice on one product versus financial advisers who can offer choice, we will all be better off for it.”

IFA chief executive Fred Dodds agreed: “It’s better than financial advice representative. It will possibly mean consumers may ask ‘what does nominated mean’ which then will have some interesting responses. And as long as those responses talk to limitations we have made progress.”

Lawyer and former FMA regulatory boss Sue Brown said it was a welcome move. “But I’ll be looking closely at the bill to see if there is a clear distinction in the requirements for sales and advice.”

Brown said she had hoped that MBIE would move away from embedding financial advice rules into the Financial Markets Conduct Act so that financial advisers could understand their requirements without the need to take expensive advice or become overly reliant on lawyers.

Industry commentator David Whyte said there was now no provision for nominated representatives to work for more than one financial advice provider. “How does this ‘ensure consumer shave access to the advice they need’ or avoid imposing ‘barriers to innovation’?”

The client-first duty had also been criticised as unworkable because it originally said it applied to any situations where an adviser was aware of a conflict between the client and “any other person”.

That has been amended to “associated parties”.