The Financial Services Council (FSC) has confirmed the speaker line-up for scheduled a cut-down digital-only ‘advice summit’ after new pandemic-related regulations introduced last month scuttled another in-person event for the industry body.
Both Commerce Minister David Clark and opposition counterpart, Andrew Bayly, have signed-on for the reformatted summit with regulators, John Botica and Derek Grantham, also on board for the morning event.
Botica and Grantham are leading the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) advisory regulatory regime change strategy. The FMA told the industry last year that adviser businesses should have applications in for the full Financial Services Legislation Amendment Act licence by September 2022.
FSC chief, Richard Klipin, said the inevitable move online would provide a “value-add” to the NZ advisory industry as it negotiates regulatory change.
“We can still offer information and a sense of community online – even if misses out on the extra value we get from face-to-face contact,” Klipin said.
After COVID outbreaks saw the late cancellation of the main FSC live annual conference for two years running, the organisation was on track to run its first face-to-face event on February 17 with an adviser summit in Queenstown.
But the industry body was forced to cancel again at the last-minute when NZ moved to the red setting under the new ‘traffic-light’ government pandemic management system put in place this January.
The ‘Future Ready’ FSC financial advice is slated for the same day as the original event, albeit squeezed into an 8:30am to 10:45am timeslot.
Klipin said the FSC would reschedule a live industry conference once NZ returns to COVID level ‘orange’ – a transition reliant on the country emerging from the expected Omicron variant wave.
In addition to the politico-regulator double acts, the FSC summit includes broader insights from: businessman, Matt Wong; Sam Tremethick, executive with insurer, AIA NZ; and, FSC content manager, Clarissa Hirst.
For more information on the FSC event click here.