The other casualties of advice industry reform

Thank you for shining a light on the partners. It's an important conversation and seems to have been mostly neglected to date. The mental health fall out from the changes is real, along with the financial and emotional fallout. We need to keep reaching out and making sure we're asking 'R U OK?' and hanging around long enough for the real answer.

The most insightful and compassionate narratory I have seen that understands what is going on

Your comment "This is one of the dark sides of industry reform when detached legislators, bureaucrats and self-interest/lobby groups (on regular pay packets) seek to impose industry change without any sense or appreciation of the impact their actions may have on the lives of self- employed people and their families." is spot on and I am one of their victims, and I have told them a couple of years ago that ASIC was the biggest danger to our business.

This is unconscionable behaviour. If it was the car industry the government would bail them out because so many jobs would be lost. Its always on the news that plants and mines are shutting down and the terrible toll it takes on those families. For some reason, Joe Public thinks that all advisers are rich beyond comparison. Far from the truth. Its their passionate vocation in life to help others and, then, hopefully walk away with the same amount of super that their clients have. We could have all worked for the government instead. So wheres the class action for compensation for lives destroyed emotionally and mentally and businesses decimated? "Pain and suffering". An article in the financial press this morning states that there could be an exodus of up to 50% of advisers. No job or career is worth the mental anguish.

ASIC is, without doubt, at the core of this and most other traumas besetting the planning profession. Rather than being a consultative, well-meaning and caring entity, assisting the planning profession in its vital role in protecting the financial security of Australian families and small businesses, ASIC's attitude - indeed commitment - is blatantly to be as obstructive to the everyday endeavors of dedicated financial planners as possible. Well, the day of reckoning when these 'human truths' are revealed in all their starkness is fast approaching, and we, the planners, and the professional bodies that purportedly represent us will hold ASIC with its Machiavellian policies to account.

Enough is enough

To quote the Great Bard: 'There is a tide in the affairs of man.'

Good to see an empathetic run down and commentary of what has been occurring in the Finance and Advisory sector. Just a shame pollies can't see the wood from the trees. It's a great shame that so many good people in the Industry who have endeavoured to genuinely care for their clients whilst at the same time build a business, have been bundled in with a few opportunists and have had the rug pulled from under them. The red tape and bureaucratic nightmare that has been created by Pollies and Bureaucrats is never ending and the fact that their is an unfair playing field between Industry Funds and Retail Funds is a disgrace. Another example of Socialism by stealth!

Thankyou. A heartfelt and accurate article. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? In our case, we are a husband and wife team who do this to try and make our clients lives better. Never did we think we would be beaten and kicked this hard for the right motives. It destroys ones belief in "the system" where "you have a go, you get a go"