But you’re right about recruitment in the industry. Sales is what the recruiters go for and a lot of the training courses are training in sales. In mortgage broking Aussie Mortgage Market advertises its loan selection software to customers as a guarantee of integrity and objectivity (though ASIC has forced them to qualify some of those claims). At the very same time it was promoting the very same software to the brokers it was trying to recruit (it’s advertisements in the trade press said they wanted people with ‘sales experience’!) as cutting edge “sales technology”.

All commissions should be banned and payment should only be fee for service.

They are merely distribution channels for fund managers at present.

So if someone said that you couldn’t be a share broker unless you kept a sample real time portfolio the performance of which was public, I’d think that was good regulation.

But yes, the regulation we have now may help a bit. And the barriers to entry it puts up does give the industry and indeed most individual firms within it a vested interest in containing the more outrageous abuses.

I agree with the thrust of your comments.

However, I worked in the “financial services industry” in the unregulated early ’90′s. This was a heady time when ex-con concreters could, (and did), pass themselves off as “financial advisors” while flogging high commission savings plans and whole of life insurance products.

These advisors knew about as much about finance and investment as your average gold fish!

Now, at least, a certified financial planner must have acquired a level of knowledge about those matters on which they advise.

Surely this is a preferable situation?