The Financial Planning Association (FPA) has prepared a series of 14 videos to help its members provide statements of advice (SOA) to clients via a video format while remaining within the regulatory framework.

FPA says the Statement of Advice Project (SOAP) Box Set includes real-life examples covering pre-retirement planning and life risk advice.

SOAP is the result of a consultation process between the FPA and its members, consumers, regulators, lawyers, compliance experts, and technology providers, the peak body said.

The FPA says the goal is to achieve a “paperless SOA” that will lead to lower compliance costs, increased efficiency while also delivering advice that clients can better understand.

“A lot of what drives up the cost of financial advice is the amount of background work, information investigation and time spent by the financial planner on what is required to be included in the SOA,” FPA CEO Sarah Abood said.

“Not only that, the SOA ends up becoming a document that clients find difficult to read and ends up clouding the actual advice being given to them.

“Any efforts made to make advice more efficient and usable by clients is a critical step forward for the profession.”

FPA Head of Policy, Strategy and Innovation Ben Marshan says he hopes SOAP will showcase alternative avenues of providing a compliant statement of advice under the current legislation now that video conference is a norm.

“We are still seeing financial planners put together paper-based SOAs that stretch between 80 to 100 pages long,” he said.

“The idea behind [SOAP] is to push the boundaries of finding the most effective way of providing advice to clients while also keeping within [Australian Securities and Investments Commission] regulations.”