The Corporations Amendment (Register of Relevant Providers) Regulation 2015 was registered [on Mon 16.2.2015]. It makes a number of amendments to the Corporations Regulations 2001 to establish a register of all financial advisers. The purpose of the Regulation is to create a register of all natural persons who provide personal advice on more complex products to retail clients under a licence. This would enable consumers to verify that their individual financial adviser is appropriately authorised to provide advice and find out more information about the financial adviser before receiving financial advice.
The benefits of the new public register include:
- providing an easily accessible central record of the competency, employment history and misconduct of individual financial advisers;
- assisting ASIC in its compliance activities and ability to respond to problem advisers; and
- providing broad support for industry efforts to improve professionalism of the industry.
The Regulation will commence [on Tue 17.2.2015].
The Corporations (Fees) Amendment (Register of Relevant Providers) Regulation 2015 was also registered [on Mon 16.2.2015]. It makes a number of amendments to the Corporations (Fees) Regulations 2001 to allow fees to be charged for the Register of Relevant Providers. The purpose of the Regulation is to allow ASIC to charge Australian Financial Services Licensees a fee when providing information to be included on the Register of Relevant Providers.
The main amendments will commence on 3 March 2015.
[LTN 30, 16.2.15]