Prepared by Lisa Sculley & Catherine Evans
ASIC has released three legislative instruments which deal with consent to deductions, disclosure of lack of independence and consent to pass on costs of providing advice in super which will apply from 1 July 2021. ASIC has also released examples of written consent forms for both ongoing and non-ongoing fees, a press release and FAQs see here
The next steps
With the 1 July 2021 deadline looming, the team at Kit Legal are currently updating templates for our clients, so that we will be ready to roll these out once we are satisfied that we have all the required information from ASIC.
In the meantime, financial services firms should be planning how the new legislation will be best implemented into their business and also to be mindful that superannuation funds in particular (and other product providers), may have their own additional requirements to satisfy in order to comply with the new consent provisions. In our view, advisers can adopt the same process for consent for ongoing fees deducted from super/non-super accounts, but trustees and some product providers may have additional requirements for how the consent is obtained or provided.