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IFSA rebrands as broader economic commentator
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| John Brogden
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The Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) has announced a major rebranding, changing its name to the Financial Services Council (FSC), effective from next month. It will use the opportunity to take on a much larger role in influencing broader economic policy in Australia.
“We are stepping out,” IFSA chief executive John Brogden said. “This is an opportunity to grow our influence and our commentary from beyond simply the core areas that we have represented in the past.”
It was important that all the superannuation bodies and other financial services bodies spoke with a unified voice, in the same way that the Mining Council has, rather than having many disparate bodies taking their views to Canberra, he said.
Brogden stressed that although he was not on an expansionist trend and did not envisage the FSC absorbing a number of smaller industry bodies, the new name was deliberately selected as one that encompassed the entire industry and would have the opportunity down the track for other organisations to come under that banner.
Brogden conceded that some of the policies the FSC would be advocating — increased migration, an increase in the GST and Australians working part time into their retirement — would be controversial.
“We think that a big Australia is a critical part of growing the economy, of sustaining our tax base, of fundamentally ensuring we don’t become another Japan where our population ages and we don’t replace our-tax paying sector of the economy,” Brogden said.
The FSC will be advocating significant tax reform with respect to the GST, proposing a 15 per cent GST tax rate in Australia that would eliminate all of the “inefficient and inequitable” state taxes such as stamp duty, Brogden said.
“We also want to talk about participation in the Australian economy,” he said. “We need to move away from the concept of full retirement. Australians really shouldn’t expect to retire completely — they should expect to work a couple of days a week.”
It was part of the Australian culture to work your way up, but scaling back is not part of the national psyche. By keeping older Australians working one or two days a week into their seventies, they would be extending their retirement income and massively increase the adequacy and longevity of retirement funds, Brogden said.
From a structural perspective, the organisation will be beefing up its research and policy teams and appointing a full-time economist who will be responsible for the broader issues upon which the FSC will comment.
There will be no immediate change to the board. Brogden anticipated that outgoing Perpetual chief executive David Deverall would stay on as chairman until the FSC’s next annual general meeting in October, provided he remained at Perpetual until that time.
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