Periodic reviews a waste of time in financial planning

ANZ CEO Mike Smith pushed introversion over financial planning in a new direction late last week.

Periodic reviews of financial plans are unimportant, is the guts of what he had to say.

On Thursday, ANZ said it would be "reimbursing some Prime Access clients after it identified the documented annual review, part of a package of services, had not been provided."

Prime Access is a fee-for-service package introduced in 2003 that includes priority access to financial planners, investment monitoring alerts and a documented annual review.

On Friday, Smith said there were no problems with the financial advice given to clients. The AFR reported his comments.

"This is not about advice, this is about a service we had promised to provide which we didn't," he said after a speech in Melbourne.

"It's not that it was bad advice, we're repaying for something we haven't done."

The reasoning seems to be that one round of investment advice may suffice for a client. In the present ANZ case the original advice is now more than ten years old (assuming clients didn't seek to refresh it in the meantime).

The approach of ANZ and others banks to related financial planning controversies will be scrutinised tomorrow at hearings of the Senate's Economics Committee.


ANZ, CBA, NAB and Macquarie (including the CEOs of the last three) are all scheduled to appear.