The FMA’s AFA Report, released this week, said advisers surveyed expressed “genuine concern” around access to advice for the small to middle end of the investor market.

“Many advisers want to be able to provide a streamlined or ‘simplified’ advice model to lower value clients, or for simpler transactions, without the full compliance burden and fee scale of a full personalised advice or investment planning service,” the report said.

The FMA said it shared advisers’ concerns about access to advice for low to mid end investors.

“We believe this issue needs to be considered along with the issues around record keeping, disclosure and full suitability analysis,” it said in the report.

“Any streamlining and simplification of these requirements should have access to advice (and the economic viability of the provision of advice) as one of its key objectives.

The FMA said it had had initial discussions with the Code Committee on possibilities for streamlining requirements for specified products, such as KiwiSaver.

Institute of Financial Advisers president Nigel Tate said the lack of access to financial planning for low and middle-end consumers wasn’t a new issue.

“The ones who most need the advice of a good financial planner are those who can least afford it; it’s almost self-evident,” he said.  “It’s a bit of a Catch 22 thing; it’s very difficult to scale your advice.”

Rival Wealth adviser Tim Fairbrother said the focus should be on consumers getting good quality advice, rather than trying to give everyone the same advice.

“Next year we’ll be looking to segment our clients a lot more; we’ll be looking to focus more on the higher value clients in terms of the ones we might do more advice for.  The more complex the advice the more likely they are to go ahead.”

At the lower end there was a lot more competition in the form of banks and RFAs, he said.