Gareth Morgan joins SIFA

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Thursday 15 April 2004

One of the financial planning industry’s most trenchant critics, former economist and investment banker Gareth Morgan, has joined the ranks of the sector.

By The Landlord

Morgan has signed up to the Society Of Independent Financial Advisers and plans bringing a bit of fire to the groups annual conference next month.

"Well, I won’t be there to be a wallflower," he told Good Returns.

Morgan has, via his newspaper columns, recently attacked the industry’s standards, saying that people who hold themselves out as financial advisers should not be receiving commissions from finance companies. If they are, he argues, they are working for those companies, and not the client.

"I’ll be putting the question to the conference, just what is your idea of ‘independent’ is?" They’ll probably say, someone who isn’t part of a franchise operation for Tower or AXA or whoever, and we’ll take the debate from there.

"If I can’t move it that will probably be it, I suppose."

His criticisms of the industry have brought a counterattack from the Financial Planners and Insurance Advisers Association head Phillip Matthews.

Morgan says he had considered joining the FPIA as well as the SIFA, "but after Matthews’ comments I think it’s a hopeless cause. They’re commission salesmen, not financial advisers, and what they are doing is being outlawed in Australia at the moment."

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