《SOA Transition to Retirement》.pdfVIP

Simplifying Statements of Advice FPA Example SOA 24 June 2008 Example SOA – Consultation Process Financial planners, politicians, and regulators alike share the common goals of ensuring that disclosure documents are understandable, useful, practical and cost effective for consumers. However, most would agree that many Statements of Advice (SOAs) are lengthy, challenging for consumers to understand, and costly for financial planners to produce. To begin the process of addressing this problem, the Financial Planning Association (FPA) initiated a Working Group of financial planning practitioners, who were tasked with the aim of identifying and simplifying key requirements that should be included in Statements of Advice. The FPA launched a discussion paper on Simplifying Statements of Advice at its National Conference in November 2007. The consultation elicited a significant response. Feedback on the project has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly with regard to how the example provided a complex scenario in a concise and comprehensible manner. A number of detailed comments and suggestions were made and the example Statements of Advice was revised on the basis of these comments. The FPA liaised with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission regularly during the development process to arrive at this final version. The SOA was rigorously consumer tested and the FPA used the results of this research to refine the example Statement of Advice. The qualitative research was based on a sample of retirees and pre-retirees with recent experience of a