Twelve industry associations have penned a joint submission to government offering rare consensus on how to make financial advice more affordable, including doing away with the overlapping and costly fee consent and disclosure documents advisers must provide to clients each year.

The so-called Joint Associations Working Group, a consortium of 12 associations that says it represents 90 per cent of practising financial advisers, has called for the “prescriptive” nature of the complex laws governing advice to be replaced with a “principles-based” approach.