The Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) is working with APRA to make more statistics available on the fees and commissions its members offer financial planners for the products they sell.
Senator Nick Sherry, shadow minister for superannuation, intergenerational finance, banking and financial services, said he had been approaching the regulator to prompt IFSA members “;to be a bit more co-operative”; on some of that information. “It would be useful to actually have some statistics in that area. The percentage of people who dial down, average level of commissions and the like,” Sherry said at an Investment & Technology roundtable last week. (Full coverage of the roundtable, in which various industry heavyweights debate the Chapman inquiry, will be available in the December Issue of Investment & Technology Magazine) Richard Gilbert, IFSA chief executive officer, said IFSA was already working on a standard. “We’ve been to APRA with a model to achieve just that…we are trying to get a result,” he said. APRA has been gathering similar information from superannuation funds over the past few months. In an investment questionnaire, which is due on December 4, 2006, the regulator asked superannuation funds for the fees a retail investor and an investor through a master trust would face. That questionnaire also asked for financial performance and unit price/crediting rate information and asset allocation details of the total fund and individual investment options.
There is one investment area where Insignia’s $180 billion super arm has not lost money for the past 17 years, which is what it calls the insurance-related investments. The alternatives strategy is gaining popularity among asset owners due to its diversification benefit, but Insignia’s super and asset management investment chief Dan Farmer warns it is a space where investors can suffer if they “stumble in without doing the homework”.
Darcy SongJanuary 23, 2025
