The AFA will not push for specific education outcomes from the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) but will present a united industry voice around what competencies should be covered under any new educational and professional standards.
The Association released its latest whitepaper – Financial Advice Competency Framework: An Industry Consensus, at its recent National Adviser Conference, which covers seven areas of knowledge and 36 competencies it believes should be present in the financial advice education and development process.
AFA general manager, member services, partnerships and campus AFA, Nick Hakes said the paper was unique in that it created a wide-ranging industry view built around the input of 500 AFA members who provided more than 1600 submissions.
“We started out not to form an AFA perspective but wanted an industry wide consensus…We started with a blank canvas and looked at knowledge and behaviours and received an evidence based consensus view that pulls together the current patchwork,” Hakes said.
“We started out not to form an AFA perspective but wanted an industry wide consensus…”
He added that the AFA would use the whitepaper in its discussions with FASEA but would not tell the Authority which direction to take.
“We don’t want to tell FASEA what to do. That’s not our role. It’s done in an environment where the entity that has to make the decision has to consult back to industry and we would very much like them to take notice and be part of the conversation,” Hakes said, adding “We’re not saying that this is the actual answer because it’s not us who makes the answer.”
“Importantly, the difference is that before we’ve had different patchworks of professional standards, different frameworks, and we have created a unified voice for our profession that not only FASEA but licensees and advisers can think through the implication to ‘so what does a professional year look like?,” he said.
Hakes said the AFA will use the whitepaper to develop future pieces of research on professional standards and education and an implementation kit would also be developed for advisers and licensees.
