The chief executives of AMP and Insignia have shared their thoughts on how regulatory and technological developments can help a largely underserved “middle Australian” population from falling through the cracks of financial advice.

A quarter of fund managers surveyed by Frontier have named the move towards internalisation by super funds as the biggest challenge to their business as they seek to retain super mandates.

ASIC has indicated its disappointment that “little improvement” has been made on the reportable situations regime, but financial advice breaches have declined over the year.

AMP has reached the next stage in the sale of its real estate and infrastructure business to Dexus, but it remains yet to be completed 18 months after entering into agreement.

The digital financial advice platform has reported strong growth over the past six months, driven by a surge in customers and the growing demand for advice.

Three months since it was first announced, the firms have confirmed the proposed merger of the Cromwell Direct Property Fund and the Australian Unity Diversified Property Fund will not be going through.

With the sweeping superannuation reforms on 1 July 2017, there has been a slew of new terminology and thresholds to contend with, and this has understandably led to some confusion, writes Chris Chow.