Passage of the Better Advice Bill will reduce the “competing requirements” of regulatory oversights on advisers and planners, easing the compliance burden on the industry, Financial Services Minister Jane Hume said.

The Bill is currently before Parliament and if passed, will transfer functions from the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) to the minister responsible for administering the Corporations Act and to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to streamline the regulation of financial advisers.

“There are so many oversight bodies in financial advice now I can barely remember them all,” Ms Hume told the Association of Financial Advisers Evolve conference last week.

She says the Bill “is the first step in entangling the gordian knot, the first step in cutting red tape for advisers, the first step in making life that little bit easier for each and every one of you”.

“It will streamline the number of bodies involved in the oversight of financial advisers, delivering much needed improvements to the regulatory framework for the sector,” Ms Hume said.

“These reforms will pave the way for Australian advisers to be free to focus on giving financial advice, while Australian consumers can be confident that they will always be receiving affordable, high-quality advice.”

In her speech, Ms Hume also touched on robo-advisers and the use of technology in providing advice services to Australians.

“Digital advice will not replace advisers, it will augment them and enhance their capabilities,” Ms Hume said.

“Advisers will be able to better serve more clients at lower costs, helping make advice more affordable and accessible than ever.”

ASIC Chairman Joseph Longo, who also spoke at the conference, says the regulator is watching closely the “evolution” of financial influencers, or finfluencers as they are commonly called.

The pandemic has created the perfect conditions for finfluencers to flourish.

“The result is the conflation of general and personal advice, which is now in a state of flux,” Mr Longo said. “We are watching this evolution closely.

“We are making it clear to social media content creators and the public that there is a clear legal difference between advice and opinion.

“And we are working to enable industry to counterbalance opinion with professional, good-quality advice that is also affordable.”

Mr Longo says the regulator will continue to engage with the industry on ways to meet the “as-yet unmet” advice needs of consumers.

ASIC is looking at creating a Financial Adviser Hub on its website to facilitate the search of relevant content easily, adding extra guidance in the form of an example Statement of Advice and an Information Sheet about Records of Advice, Mr Longo said.