Morning Briefing: Accounting body CPA Australia focusing on financial advice expansion

An accounting body has started recruiting for its push into the financial planning market... Canada expresses concerns about tracking of foreign buyers...

Accounting body focusing on financial advice expansion
Accounting body CPA Australia has started recruiting for its push into the financial planning market and is a new competitor for some of Australia's biggest wealth management companies, including AMP and the big banks, the Australian Financial Review reports. 

Its newly formed subsidiary, CPA Australia Advice, recently completed a tour across six cities to present its new licensing regime and multi-million dollar technology platform for financial planners ahead of receiving an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL).

CEO Alex Malley said members had been "very positive" in their feedback.

"We're continuing to work through the establishment process for CPA Australia Advice with the aim of being operational by 1 July 2016", said Malley. 

"They could well end up over 1000 advisors, which would make them the largest non-institutionally owned licensee business in the country," former ANZ wealth boss Neil Younger said. "They definitely have the capacity to get large, which necessitates an increased capability within that business." 

Canada expresses concerns about tracking of foreign buyers
Concern about the impact foreign money has on house prices is not unique to Australia, with Canada’s central bank expressing concern about how the flow of foreign capital into the country’s real estate market is being tracked.

According to a Bloomberg report last week, calculations by Peter Routledge, a financial analyst at the National Bank of Canada, suggest that Chinese investors purchased C$12.7 billion worth of residential real estate in the Canadian city of Vancouver in 2015, which represents 33% of the total C$38.5 billion sold in the year.

In Toronto, Chinese buyers are estimated to have accounted for 14% of purchases, or about C$9 billion of the C$63 billion worth of sales that happened in 2015.

The analysis came days after the Canadian government announced it will spend C$500,000 over the coming year to research foreign buyers, an amount Routledge suggested will likely do little to give the country a better understanding of the scope of foreign investment.