Advisers have come out strongly in favour of raising educational standards for those providing personal financial advice in Australia.
81% of advisers who responded to our latest poll want to see higher educational standards for financial planners, with the majority of those preferring industry self regulation as the answer, rather than government intervention.
Our question is:
Do you believe that educational qualifying standards should be raised for those wishing to provide personal financial advice?
At time of publication, 47% of advisers agree that standards should be raised, via self regulation, and 34% want to see standards raised by government regulation.
15% of poll respondents believe educational qualifying standards should not be raised and 4% are undecided.
But comments received from advisers suggest there are deeper underlying issues than adviser educational standards when it comes to providing quality advice to clients. A selection of comments follows:
“The industry is highly regulated as it is, it doesn’t need more academic input…”
“There will always be, in every industry, those who give the industry and the rest a bad name. We need people who are client oriented, not self orientated.”
A spokesperson representing Kaplan Professional told riskinfo:
“As an education provider, it’s not our place to comment on regulations. Our role is to support and work with the industry to provide the highest quality in education that meets ours clients needs.”
The spokesperson added, “What we’re seeing is more clients and individual financial planners embracing further education. They’re coming to us because they want to up-skill and go beyond RG146 compliance. They’ve come to realise that if they are better qualified and equipped to handle more complex client situations, they’re in a much better position to achieve client referrals and stay more employable.”
The general ‘mood of the meeting’ seems to suggest that while most advisers believe that raising minimum educational standards is a positive move when it comes to providing consumers with quality financial advice, it is the structure of the current advice systems that need attention, and the need to more closely monitor the nature of the advice being provided.
Future riskinfo polls will address the issue of advice structures within the financial services industry, but our current poll remains open for you to have your vote and to have your say…
