The Financial Services Reform Bill comes into the Senate today for debate. The regulations governing the working of the Bill ­– the Corporations Amendment Regulations 2001 – were released by the Federal Government last week, hot on the heels of the Parliamentary Committee on Corporations and Securities report on the Bill.

And it would appear that intensive lobbying by life and general agents against the commission disclosure aspects of the bill has been largely unsuccessful. In a briefing to backbenchers last night in Canberra, Financial Services and Regulation Minister Joe Hockey is understood to have presented an amendment that would give life agents some job security during the two-year transition period.

As presented last week, there are no surprises in the regulations, despite concerns expressed over the past few months that Mr Hockey might be tempted to water down key provisions to ensure the Bill’s survival.

In fact, experts who examined the regulations over the weekend have concurred there is little to surprise anyone. Canberra consultant John Hanks, who has been working with NIBA on the Bill, said there is “little different” in the regulations.

However, the Government is expected to introduce more amendments during the week, although none of these are expected to be significant for brokers.

The Parliamentary Committee on Corporations and Securities report recommended several amendments based on its desire to ensure that smaller intermediaries are not unduly burdened by compliance costs and the new FSRB requirements.

The report acknowledged the opposition of a broad cross-section of life agents to the disclosure of commission on risk products, asserting that it serves no useful purpose “and could be a serious impediment to a legitimate small business marketing process”.

The report also quoted a submission from the Insurance Advisers Association of Australia – formerly the Insurance Agents Association – which said that disclosure of risk commission “does not benefit the consumer”. And it included NIBA among the organisations and individuals opposed to commission disclosure. That would have come as a surprise to NIBA, which only opposed disclosure on non-domestic policies.

But Canberra observers say Mr Hockey is likely to ignore the committee’s report anyway, as he did with the initial parliamentary examination of the FSRB.

“The Democrats and the ALP will have to accept it,” one source said. “The Bill will get through.”

That includes commission disclosure, which several sources contacted yesterday said is likely to remain unchanged, despite the 216 paragraphs of summarised evidence from interested groups and individuals who made submissions to the parliamentary inquiry.

The ALP representatives on the committee included financial services spokesman Senator Stephen Conroy. They called for the media, solicitors, accountants and other professional groups to be exempted from the conditions of the Bill, alleging they have “inadvertently” been caught. They also wanted the definition of a financial product to exempt all basic banking deposit products, but also favoured wider commission disclosure.