FOFA - wholesale v retail Options Paper

Articles Written by Austin Bell (Partner), Shelley Hemmings (Partner), John Keeves (Partner)

In January 2011, Treasury released an Options Paper on the wholesale v retail client distinction, as part of the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) project. The paper floats a number of options for a "new regime", including:

  • update and index the dollar product thresholds
  • repeal the sophisticated investor test
  • remove the wholesale/retail distinction completely
  • introduce a wholly subjective test
  • do nothing.

Submissions on the Options Paper were due on 25 February 2011. Legislation to implement FOFA is not expected to come into force until mid-2012, but exposure draft legislation might be seen as early as mid-2011.

Download the Options Paper here.

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