Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten shows little sign of backing down on the key sticking points in Treasury’s proposed Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) financial services reforms.

Speaking at an Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) lunch last week, Mr Shorten remained stoic in his defence of the controversial FOFA proposals of asking consumers to opt-in to their financial advice plan biennially and removing commissions on insurance sold within superannuation funds.

On the issue of opt-in, Mr Shorten told advisers that nothing he has seen since becoming Assistant Treasurer “has convinced me that a mandatory requirement for you to ask your customers on a periodic basis to opt-in is a great threat to your business models”.

He dismissed calls that it will lead to large cost increases.

“I just don’t believe that,” he said. “I think that people are over-reacting to this opt-in issue.”

He says he was initially contemplating making opt-in an annual requirement but was “persuaded that would be too onerous” and changed the proposal to a biennial one.

But while Mr Shorten says he is willing to work with the AFA on what form the opt-in should take, it is unlikely that Treasury will be willing to revise it to a three or five-year requirement.

“We’re not proposing to introduce the change until next year and we’re not proposing that you have to ask your existing client base for two years after that,” Mr Shorten says.

But recent lobbying efforts by the AFA of the crossbench MPs in Canberra may influence the issue, with independent MP Rob Oakeshott telling the Eureka Report: “I am considering amending this to at least five-year service agreements and would be interested to see if the Coalition wishes to go further.”

Mr Shorten seems equally unmovable on the issue of banning commissions on life insurance sold through superannuation

He told advisers at the AFA lunch that the selling of insurance outside of superannuation “does require some effort and some skill in lining people up. I am not persuaded that in many categories of insurance within superannuation it requires that same level of elbow grease that you couldn’t just charge your customer [a fee].”

Mr Shorten says the draft FOFA legislation should be released in the next couple of months – “probably August”.

AFA political adviser Kerry Chikarovski says the association will return to Canberra after the draft legislation is introduced “to discuss the amendments required” with the independent and Greens MPs.