Finance industry spokesgroups must work together in an effort to keep the threat of over-legislation at bay, according to MFAA CEO, Phil Naylor.
Speaking at a filmed meeting with CPA CEO, Alex Malley, AFA CEO, Brad Fox and FPA general manager of government relations, Dante de Gori, Naylor stressed the importance of collaboration between industries in order to tackle issues with excessive government intervention in the finance industry.
“To me, the opposite of competition is collusion…and no one’s suggesting that we should collude. But I think it makes a lot of good sense [to] collaborate. I don’t see that there’s just going to be one huge profession one day – there’s lots of differences – but I think there are some commonalities. It’s important for the associations to work together…so that when we do get before the regulators, we know what each of the others are going to say and we can explain it [to regulators] very cogently.”
Naylor went on to argue that that the ‘culture in Canberra’ where bureaucrats view it as their role to create new regulation – whether it’s necessary or not.
“If they’re not writing regulations, they’re not doing anything. We’ve gone through a successful period with the regulators, but now they’re saying ‘we’ve done that, so what’s next? What else can we regulate?’ They’re out there finding solutions to problems that don’t exist.”
De Gori followed Naylor’s comments by arguing that associations like his and the MFAA – not regulators – should be in charge of determining the standard for someone wanting to enter and practice a particular profession.
“I think we should control that standard, not the regulator...I think we need to be very serious about what we expect as the minimum entry standard…because that is what resonates with consumers. Then you look at how we can provide a professional framework for people to actually act, conduct and be motivated in the industry.”
“We have a lot to learn from the accounting bodies with respect to what they’ve done,” adds de Gori. “We need to keep raising that bar; we need to push Canberra back and say ‘we can do this’ - but we need to show it and I think we need to work together around that.”
