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“It’s important that we all keep focus on our compliance obligations at all times…They’re still relatively new, July 2010 they came into being, so people are still juggling with these obligations to make sure they’re doing the right things. And we still see it today, where people who have been in the industry five, 10, 15 years…we still find people who are struggling with these obligations.”
When it comes to the up-coming privacy and responsible credit reporting changes, White says there will be ‘significant’ impacts to the ways brokers deal with information given to them by clients - and that staying on top of these changes will be critical.
“We, ourselves, are still working through it with our attorneys. There are going to be some significant impacts from the Privacy Act point of view and how you interact with information that you have on behalf of clients and who you give that to. Even though some of these obligations are a part of our business today, the screws are really being tightened up.”
Finally, White says many brokers need to start thinking bigger and developing long-term strategies in case further legislation is brought in.
“It’s very easy to sit back and just do what you do every day and not worry too much about the future, but I think it’s something that we’ve got to be very conscious of. We can see the FOFA reforms that are impacting into the financial planning sector and we’ve got to be careful that those things don’t necessarily mirror across - and it could well do. Fee for service is used by many brokers at the moment and it could well be that everybody needs to have a plan B in their pocket if those sort of reforms come across into our sector.”
To watch the full interview with Peter White, Click Here
