Commissions safe for now but big changes possible for financial advice industry

The Options Paper released yesterday for the review of the financial advisers regime provides three scenarios for change ranging from modest to sweeping.

However the "no commissions" bullet seems to have been dodged – for now.

We outline the reform proposals.

Structure of Options Paper

Because of the risk to New Zealand's reputation created by the misuse of the Financial Service Providers Register (FSPR), particularly by off-shore controlled providers, the Government wants to clean up this area ahead of any further changes to the framework. Hence it has set an earlier date of 29 January 2016 for feedback on this issue.

The submission date for the broader reform proposals is 26 February 2016.