The issue flared up last week when the  NZ Financial Advisers Association (NZFAA) sent an email to advisers, offering to waive the joining fee if they joined before September 6.

The Professional Advisers Association (PAA), responded with an email to members. It said some had raised concerns, believing that the NZFAA was a disputes resolution service.

“It would appear that many members may not realise that NZFAA is a small professional body, and is closely associated with TNP, and is run out of their offices in Auckland. While we believe that ‘choice’ is a good thing for all consumers, we have some serious concerns about any professional body being so closely entwined with a commercial entity such as a dealer group.”

General manager Jenny Campbell did not want to comment when approached by Good Returns.

But adviser Sean Minhinnick said there were far too many professional associations, all pitching for advisers.

“To be considered a profession one day, we need to have one professional association like the law society, or NZICA for accountants, instead of having a hotchpotch of various associations, some collegial and some technical. It’s not a good idea.”

He said some organisations seemed to just be a group of people who liked to get together, and offered a few benefits for members at the same time. “It distracts from the core function of the association, which should be to raise the standards of the profession and have strong disciplinary processes and codes of conduct.”

Murray Weatherston, of Financial Focus, said it sounded like territorial warfare. “They all do different things. Those that provide useful services will survive and those that don’t will decline.”

NZFAA general manager David Yates would not say how many adviser members his organisation had, or what its targets were.

But he said the claim that it was entwined was not accurate. “Launched in January 2013 as a merger between TNPPA and LBA, NZFAA is an incorporated society owned and operated by its members as a not-for-profit entity. We are structurally and operationally separate from any commercially operated entity in New Zealand.”