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Accountants are seen as the most competent when it comes to providing advice, but they continue to fall behind family and friends in being the first port of call, highlighting affordability and access issues facing the industry.
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Accountants lag behind family and friends in advice hunt
06 March 2020
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Australians are looking for tax advice more than ever, with over one in three looking for help with their tax affairs, according to Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand’s (CA ANZ) new Future of Advice report.
However, Australians were more likely to seek that advice from friends and family, ahead of any formal sources of advice from professionals.
“The most trusted source of information comes from family and friends around a barbecue, or dinner table, followed by accountants,” said CA ANZ thought leadership and research leader Geraldine Magarey.
“And while family and friends are considered a good source of advice, accountants are viewed as the most competent and trustworthy — above other professions, including bankers and lawyers.”
The survey of 1,700 respondents found that a quarter of them found that professional advice was too costly, while 15 per cent were unsure of the value added by advisers.
The overwhelming barrier for not seeking professional advice was the perception that it would mean giving up control of their own financial decisions, with 37 per cent indicating so.
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However, when asked about the future of advice, the number one change people wanted was to make advice less expensive.
“There are very clear regulatory barriers that prevent this from happening, particularly in Australia,” said CA ANZ group executive Simon Grant.
“Currently, advice in Australia is primarily regulated along product lines requiring different licences and requirements to provide varying types of advice.
“This makes it difficult to receive the expert advice required to meet all of an individual’s wide-ranging advice needs. Advice can often fall under multiple regulatory frameworks in the same conversation, or even the same sentence, and this is confusing for consumers.
“While additional regulation on advisers is aiming to push the industry up the professional curve and provide better protection for individuals and businesses alike, it is having the unintended consequence of making advice unaffordable and inaccessible for more people.”
The growing complexity of the regulatory regime has not been lost on the accounting profession, with the joint accounting bodies — made up of CA ANZ, CPA Australia and the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA) — recently coming together to consult on a solution to present to government.
It follows research from CPA Australia showing that up to a third of accountants are looking to abandon advice services in the face of increasing regulatory cost and burden.
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