Aussie Financial Advisers Not Always Giving Best Pension Advice

About one out of five financial advisers in Australia are not giving their pension clients advice that is in their best interests, the Australia Securities and Investments Commission has found. "The most positive finding was that the 'strategic advice'... was generally helpful to consumers," said ASIC Chairman Jeffrey Lucy in a statement, but he added that the financial advice industry "still has significant work to do before the quality of advice will be consistently at levels that ASIC and consumers would regard as acceptable." The survey found that in one-third of the cases, advisers lacked credible reasons for advising a customer switch to superannuation funds. ASIC also discovered that 46% of advisers did not give a required written Statement of Advice, though it noted that a portion of that was oral advice to remain with an existing fund.