The zero commission legislation coming into Australia will now put the burden on the banks to provide low cost advice alternatives themselves.

Zero commission means that it is just not possible for the face-to-face adviser market to provide advice to any but the high end of the market.

And that is OK too, because for the majority of consumers, say those not in the top 20% of the market, their advice requirements are simpler anyway.

The push will be on now for financial institutions to have more ‘gears’ and options in the way customers can access advice.

That means the two lower cost channels of phone and web will begin to play a much larger role in the delivery and servicing of advice to customers. While it is possible to include a compliant low cost advice service on your website – the first step for many will be a hybrid of web-phone advice where the web provides the initial fact find with the phone channel completing the advice transaction.

Even today, it’s easy to include ‘smart calculators’ online to gather information and build leads for your advice business (but then again we’re probably a bit biased!)