Existing advisers could be left with less than three years to complete additional education requirements to meet the proposed new advice standards, the Financial Planning Association (FPA) has warned.
Addressing attendees at the Sydney leg of the FPA’s mid-year roadshow series, FPA General Manager Policy and Conduct, Dante De Gori, said the Association supported the advice competency and standards reforms proposed by the Parliamentary Joint Committee (PJC) on Corporations and Financial Services (see: PJC Proposes Significant Restructure of Advice Industry). But Mr De Gori warned that the current transition timeline proposed by the PJC left existing advisers with less than three years to comply with the new minimum standards.
Under the PJC proposal, existing advisers would be required to complete a registration exam and hold a membership with an approved professional body. They would also be subject to a Recognised Prior Learning Framework, to be developed by a newly created education council, which would match advisers’ skills and technical knowledge against those obtained by new graduates of financial planning degrees. “For some of you, that may mean additional studies,” Mr De Gori explained.
Under the recommended model, existing advisers would have until 1 January 2019 to complete these requirements. However, the prior learning framework is not due to be developed until July 2016.
…that leaves less than three years for advisers to sort out their education requirements
“So as you can see, that leaves less than three years for advisers to sort out their education requirements,” Mr De Gori said.
The good news, Mr De Gori said, is that there is no requirement for existing planners to have to complete an undergraduate degree. “You will not be asked to go to university for the next six years, part time,” Mr De Gori confirmed.
Mr De Gori also clarified that unlike recommendations made by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission earlier in the education debate, the registration exam proposed by the PJC is a one-off exam. “All you need to do going forward is to complete your CPD,” Mr De Gori told advisers.
The Government is still in consultation with stakeholders regarding the proposed education framework, and Mr De Gori was keen to point out that the minimum requirements and transition timeline were still yet to become law. But he also noted that the PJC report had bi-partisan support and industry submissions to the Government had also been largely supportive.
“We’re hoping to get a final position from the Government regarding this by the end of July,” Mr De Gori concluded.
Gee, let’s clean up the industry and raise the professional standards. But, at the same time provide an exemption with ‘prior learning’. It is the old lifies without an education that think that they know it all that are the problem. Providing them with another get out of jail free card is plain stupid.
We should have the same laws and regulations for everyone. ‘Special rights’ just prostitute the system.
Why should I have to invest my time and resources in a real professional education when some know it all who hasn’t done coned in years doesn’t have to bother because he is an old fart!
Joel, while I am a strong supporter formal studies, “a real professional education” does not come from books alone. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that those without a few letters at the end of their name have less knowledge than you or that those with the letters always provide good advice. Get to know an “old lifie” and you never know, you might learn something from the old fart.
Dear Joel,
The CBA planner Don Nguyen is a young person. Age of a person is irrelevant when it comes to ethics and honesty. Do your home work before you make a statement like this.
What an arrogant little upstart you are!
People have been in this industry for far more years than you may ever be with that sort of attitude.
Education does come form more places than books. Education is attending to clients when there is a claim. When a cheque for some-ones death is to be presented. When finding solutions to normally un-insurable risks.
If this is the respect you show to ‘old lifiies’ then I am concerned with how yu address your clients or people who are older than you. Smarter than you. More experienced than you. And more educated than you.
Many will have forgotten more than you may ever learn.
Possibly long before you were born, education standards were implemented and regulated and to remain in the industry, EVERYONE had to pass those exams.
Many ‘old lifies’ started the industry in which you now have the opportunity to work in.
I suggest that you may wish to reconsider your language and defer to more experienced people who also recognise that much can be learned from younger people.
Such a brash attitude is what gives the industry a bad perception.
Especially the use of manners.
Pull your head out!
If you can’t meet todays education standards, you dont deserve to be authorised under any license.
Joel, I am 65, a CFP and have studied most of my life and I have been a planner possibly longer than you have been alive. I happen to also know some of those ‘old fart lifies’ you refer to Joel and without exception they are fair, honourable and compliant professionals.
I am also tired of listening to half cocked stupid comments from people like you which are neither sensible, objective nor helpful. One thing we ‘old farts’ do not appreciate is being spoken down to by a modern day genius like you.
You sound wet behind the ears to me!
Joel, with all due respect (look it up in a dictionary) you need to show a little more respect to others in your profession. I am not a ‘lifie’ or an ‘old fart’ (although you sound like an immature 22 year old so anyone over 35 would probably fit that description to you)
By all means, voice your opinion, but try to do so without sounding like some young smart-a&*^.
HI Joel
I am one of those old farts you seem keen on “bagging” without the slightest idea of what we have done over the past 30 years or more. Understanding people their needs desires and fears is not something you can learn in a book ! It takes years of patience and understanding that forms the true part of the word “fudiciary duty, Not what is 100 times one thousand to the second power.
If people trust you they will act on your advice not on how many certificates you have on your wall or letters after your name. Yes knowing your products and there place in your business is important but it does not take three years of night time Tafe to learn. I can tell you a dozen names of so called highly educated advisers who “skipped” off with someones life savings.
When you have been to funerals with the family of a long term client.sat with distraught parents after the loss of a child you can tell me prior experience does not count .Experience is not all facts and figures
Good comment Travis.
I don’t which is worse, an old lifie who thinks they know it all or a “wet behind the ears” newbie who thinks they know it all because they’ve passed a few exams and done a couple of theoretical assignments.
Joel, you are falling for the classic failing of the inexperienced; assuming the exception is the rule and tarring everything with the same brush. Of course there are some people who should not be an adviser, and these are represented in the ranks of the ‘old farts’ as well as in the ranks of the ‘newbies’. However, I have found most advisers I have met, both old and new, are solid representatives of our profession. I understand you are new and want to start a revolution, but please don’t start a war amongst our own ranks. We have enough to deal with trying to negotiate the changes being foisted on us by outsiders, some of which are ill-advised and impractical.
I think you are one of the few who think that most advisers are solid representatives of our profession. I think that more than 80% of the advisers i have met are completely incompetent.
Joel, I hope you’re not that judgmental when attending to client’s personal needs and objectives!!!!
Pull your head in Joel. You will get no where in the life industry if you have pre-set ideas and attitudes towards people of different ages, from different lifestyles/backgrounds etc, as you have demonstrated here by your description of people who have been in this industry for many years. I don’t consider myself an old fart but this is my thirtieth year in the industry. I have seen several ‘must have’ changes introduced only to be scrapped a few years later for something different. Mate, three or four years of going to Uni a few hours a week for a few months a year in between toga parties won’t make you a good life adviser. Experience and empathy will go a long way to helping you achieve this status, however. Neither of which you appear to have based on your little dummy spit. And, btw, I do have qualifications!
Joel, I think your comment is naive. For what its worth this is what I think.
There is an assumption that more education around ethics and technical financial planning skills will solve all the industry’s woes. This “solution” also gets iterated every time another “scandal” is raised in the press or one of the – unending stream of – inquiries reports.
I guess this is the world we live in today, but it would be good to think that all the time and money being expended could actually do some good.
I became a financial planner just over 10 years ago after a reasonably successful career in a large corporate. I left the company I had worked for for more than 20 years, took a couple of years off to do my MBA then started working as a consultant advising small businesses. I got into financial planning through a conversation with my then accountant which roughly corresponded with the death of my brother who at 39 died with no super, no insurance, a large mortgage against an unfinished owner built house and a wife and six children aged from between 3 and 17 – I thought I could use my skills to make a decent living and help people. I still ascribe to this. What I never expected was to join an industry which is so conflicted precisely because of the conflict between advice and product.
I have just started the CFP. I did this because it’s inevitable something like this will be needed, not because I believe it’s necessary. I found CFP1 interesting and useful but I don’t think that someone who is a crook would change their ways by doing this. Likewise there is a risk that by educating people only in the technical stuff (the so called “relevant degree”) that all you do is create smarter crooks.
I think having people come into the industry with a degree is positive – I don’t think though that this has to be something financial. Indeed I think we have lost sight of what education should be about – you want people who are real, have a well-rounded understanding of the world, who can question right and wrong and who stand up for what is right; you also want people who are capable of adapting to change. Once you have this by all means overlay the technical but don’t start with this. If you doubt this have a look at the recent ABC 4 Corners program on bullying in the medical profession which has been going on for years – here you have brilliant, highly skilled and educated technicians who are absolute bastards towards the next generation of specialists. Why, what is missing from their training? Certainly not training in ethics or technical knowledge, yet they still do harm.
Look beyond technical financial planning training, beyond sales skills, and look at educating planners to be real and provide clients with what they need which is good, honest, practical advice (strategy) at a fair price that helps them improve their lives – most of the time it does not matter whether this is technically brilliant or not.
Its a pity politicians, ASIC and other commentators and experts don’t really understand this!
Oh they understand it okay. They also understand their own needs to pitch to the media and to the lowest common denominator, that being the electorate.
Providing indeed allowing balance into the debate does not enter into the discussion at any of these levels.
Interestingly there is absolutely NO mention of education standards for those in management positions that are a part of the present system pushing planners. There are still those pushing sales targets with no regard to ethics or best interests-only their own $$$ interests. ASIC is looking at holding these people accountable – wonder if they will be retrospective. Should these people have planning qualifications as well? you don’t see other professions run by “”sales people”.
So very well put Dave.
Joel, in case you missed it, your a fool. Most of those product floggers your trying to describe are gone if not all of them. I have no degree & proud of it. I will never get a degree either & think this whole “education & courses” are everything view being shoved down our throats is a convenient course flogging exercise by a greedy self centered industry body that has lost its way years ago & forgotten who they should be representing & how they should be helping us rather than lining their own pockets by making us pay for the hurdles they are unnecessarily creating. The FPA should be ashamed of themselves.
Experience. Good experience is EVERYTHING! END OF STORY. You cant buy it & you can’t study for it. Come back & comment once you have advised clients through 30 years of turbulence & have the runs on the board. Until then study if you like but I dont need to. Ive learnt everything there is to know, the rest is just noise & politically correct rubbish. Meanwhile lets hear some more rubbish from the FPA about why we need their courses & memberships.
Cant see a degree helping you. Spelling and grammar are taught in primary school, not university.
Goodness Joel …how lucky you are that you will never need mentoring or guidance from any of us “oldies” and that you have this gig fully sorted. Because based on the comments above I can’t see too many of us putting our hand up to help you anytime soon.
Hey Joel
Mate you asked for it and got it fair and square. Now for you the best thing you could do is pair up with an ol Lifie, You will learn more from being there, in the field listening to the interaction between Lifie and client, how to talk, understand the way they think and work with clients. You will learn so much. I don’t doubt you are a great young lad who would really like to know a great deal more about the work you and the rest of us carry out. Hopefully you may even get the chance to be there when a claim cheque is delivered. There is nothing like saving a families financial life. They have just lost someone and are in a distressed state let alone dealing with the financial problems left behind.
Comments are closed.