Not enough advisers for KiwiSaver
There have been warnings of a “train wreck” and an “adviser crunch” on the financial services industry next year, as New Zealand beds in a new savings regime and a new savings tax regime.
Tuesday, October 10th 2006, 6:42AM
Every employer in the country will have to offer access to KiwiSaver when it starts, and Perry says there is not enough expertise to advise all those employers.
There are about 2.1 million employees in New Zealand: the government estimates about 700,000 of those change jobs each year.
The idea that all those will be able to be provided with sufficient guidance and advice from the current industry is an ambitious one, Perry says.
And on the administration side, the same conference has been told to expect a huge gap.
Inland Revenue Department KiwiSaver Programme director Cathy Magiannis, said that the IRD will be hiring between 300 and 400 people to work on processing KiwiSaver.
“That’s more than there currently are in the entire industry,” Aventine’s Michael Chamberlain said.
KiwiSaver has been labelled retail superannuation at wholesale prices. ASB Group Investments general manager John Smith said: “It could also be called superannuation without intermediaries.”
He says employees need advice, and it looks like that role will fall to product providers.
Some employees will go to their employers, he says, but employers have made it clear they do not want to become caught up in a financial intermediary role.
That leaves financial adviser’s he says, “but people are only going to go to them if they are prepared to pay.
We as providers will get much more interaction with savers – they are going to come to us more.”
| « News Round Up | Sovereign takes regulation bull by the horns » |
Special Offers
Commenting is closed
|
|
Printable version |
|
Email to a friend |
