Not surprisingly, most financial advisers are opposed to the ban on life insurance commission proposed by the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms.

A survey by CoreData has found 83.6% of advisers are opposed to banning commission on life insurance products sold through superannuation.

As a result of the ban, life insurance advisers are expecting to lose about 25% of their revenue.

The research house found only one in 10 advisers thought the ban on life insurance commissions will improve the quality of advice, and only 7.8% of those surveyed believe clients will be better off.

Advisers expect the ban will result in additional costs for the consumer as advice will have to be charged directly, rather than paid for by the insurer.

They say this will result in lower income families not seeking life insurance because it will be unaffordable.

The FOFA reform proposing clients renew their advice agreement every two years has also been condemned by most advisers.

The CoreData research shows advisers think this provision will add 6.5 hours a week to their administration schedules and will cost an adviser about $84,500 a year.

When this is scaled up to include the entire financial planning industry, the cost is estimated at $1.35 billion – a figure that advisers say will be passed on to the consumer.

As a result, the research finds only 22% of advisers think the proposed biannual opt-in reform is good.

Almost 90% of the advisers surveyed say the reform will impact their business and 46% of them say the impact will be “significant”.

But advisers did think some parts of the FOFA reforms are “positive”, with half of them agreeing scaled advice will create new growth opportunities.