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Growing with strength
Underpinning growth with strong compliance represents a central theme of this year’s Investment andFinancial Services Association (IFSA) national conference on the Gold Coast.
According to IFSA chief executive Richard Gilbert, the linkage between growth and compliance explains why the 2006 conference is titled “Connect”, inasmuch as it is intended to ensure that delegates understand the key interrelationships.
“The message to the industry is to maintain strong growth, but don’t drop the ball on compliance,” he says. “And I think that message is made clear by the fact that we have the chairman of the AustralianSecurities and Investments Commission, Jeffrey Lucy, as one of our earliest speakers.”
Gilbert points out that the theme will be continued by Federal Assistant Treasurer Peter Dutton, who will be speaking the next day on “Delivering firm foundations for the future of the industry”.
In fact, the title of Lucy’s address on the opening afternoon of the conference is “Regulatory futures — where to on wealth management?” — a key reference to the role of the regulator in respect to both fund managers and financial advisers.
According to Gilbert, the 2006 conference is the biggest held so far by IFSA, and will not only canvass a range of new issues but revisit and update some of themes of earlier conferences.
What it will not revisit, however, is the question of Australia’s retirement savings gap in circumstances where IFSA earlier this year released an updated report revealing that the nation’s retirement savings gap had been narrowed by around 15 per cent, or approximately $16,500 per person, over the past three years.
However, while the conference will not be revisiting the retirement savings gap issue, it will be taking another look at the question of underinsurance — this time concentrating on underinsurance in the business sector, where most people still have not reached retirement savings adequacy.
What will also be of interest to delegates is PricewaterhouseCoopers’ follow-up to its Australian Investment Management Survey in circumstances where the 2005 survey revealed a number of key issues that needed to be addressed by the industry, not the least of which being the need to rationalise and modernise product suites.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is not only expected to release updated survey data, but provide comparisons between the responses it received in 2005 and those it received this year.
Gilbert says many of the sessions at this year’s conference will deal with the increasing convergence of the retail and wholesale areas of the financial services industry, and the manner in which this was creating challenges for those working in the industry.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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