Digital advice may reduce advisers’ compliance costs, Westpac has told a Senate inquiry into financial advice.

A letter from the bank’s Head of Group Government and Industry Affairs Brett Gale says “about 20%” of Australians currently utilise financial advice.

“The introduction of advice delivered digitally should allow more Australians to access advice, more affordably,” he said.

“However, currently personal advice laws are all articulated as being delivered by a person and do not effectively allow delivery via an algorithm or system.

“Regulatory change would be required to allow new mechanisms for advice delivery.”

Westpac has also called for consolidation of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) professional and financial adviser registers, to ease adviser compliance costs.

“Currently advisers update two separate ASIC registers, with no link between each one to share the information,” Mr Gale said.

“This is time-consuming and increases the risk for data entry error and a poor experience for customers because information appears differently/inconsistently between the two sites.”

He says it costs about $43 for each change to each register.

Westpac also wants advisers to be given more time to respond to ASIC notices.

Mr Gale says this will require industry to work with the regulator on a “responsive timeframe”.

“This may include things such as agreeing the scope of what’s needed up front, or increased timeframes for response.

“For instance, an agreement with ASIC to increase turnaround time for notices from two weeks to four or five weeks would lessen the intense financial and workforce impact to recipients and provide ASIC with improved responses.”

Mr Gale says such a change would help advisers across the industry, particularly smaller players.