{"id":32163,"date":"2016-01-27T06:01:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T19:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=32163"},"modified":"2026-01-12T16:04:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T05:04:06","slug":"industry-groups-spent-past-year-on-professional-standards-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2016\/01\/27\/industry-groups-spent-past-year-on-professional-standards-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Industry Groups Unite on Professional Standards Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and the Financial Planning Association (FPA) have been meeting with other industry associations, including those which have been critical of advisers, for more than a year to shape discussions around the education and professional standards of advisers.<\/p>\n

The six-member group – which represents advisers, SMSF and industry super funds, banks and consumers – includes the AFA, FPA, SMSF Association (SMSFA), Industry Super Australia (ISA), Australian Banking Association (ABA) and Choice, despite the fact that some of the groups have been critical of each other\u2019s actions and members in the past.<\/p>\n

The presence of the six-member group was stated on a number of occasions in submissions made by the AFA and FPA in response to the release of the draft professional standards legislation in December 2015.<\/p>\n

Those submissions also stated a further \u2018consensus submission\u2019 had been jointly compiled by the six associations and submitted to the Treasury but has yet to be made public by the group.<\/p>\n

\"Dante<\/a>
Dante De Gori, FPA General Manager Policy and Conduct<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

FPA, General Manager Policy and Conduct, Dante De Gori<\/strong> said the group and the submission viewed the issue of planner education and standards at high level while individual member associations made more detailed submissions covering areas that were relevant to their members and were of ongoing concern.<\/p>\n

According to De Gori, the group formed just over a year ago to examine how to respond to the recommendations of the Parliamentary Joint Committee (PJC) and Financial System Inquiry (FSI) regarding adviser education and professional standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike other areas, this was not as controversial, and we all agreed do work on these issues and for the past 12 months have had open dialogue which resulted in a joint position on the professional standards framework,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to De Gori the group reached consensus on the key issues of education requirements for new entrants into financial advice as well as adherence to codes of conduct and ongoing training for all advisers and how existing advisers should be transitioned to a new standards system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe agreed there should be a framework for new advisers…but there was no support in the group for requiring existing advisers to attain a degree level qualification\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWe agreed there should be a framework for new advisers and details of that still need to be worked out but there was no support in the group for requiring existing advisers to attain a degree level qualification,\u201d De Gori said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, we did agree there should be a transition model with further study but that should be left to an independent body.\u201d<\/p>\n

SMSFA, Chief Executive, Andrea Slattery<\/strong> said the association joined the group as it agreed with the common premise that consumers needed to be served by a profession in the area of financial advice.<\/p>\n

Slattery stated the involvement of the Federal Government via the draft legislation meant it has become involved as a co-regulator with industry and the six-member group was asked to discuss how this co-regulation would work and how it would meet the objectives of the PJC recommendations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an opportunity to work with other groups, without factions and with the same goals, and because we have been involved with raising standards and building a profession, particularly around advice specialisations such as Self-Managed Super Fund (SMSF) advice,\u201d Slattery said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople need to be competent to provide advice on a range of areas in financial advice but all parts of the advice sector need to be a profession, which is why we have agreed that a minimum education standard for new entrants is an undergraduate qualification, and then to go beyond that if necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

De Gori said despite the different backgrounds and members of the six associations it was important to have discussions with them and have groups like Choice and ISA \u2018in the tent\u2019 before the legislation was finalised.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to understand their concerns and have them understand ours which should lead to better progress and outcomes on the issues. It is better to have these conversations in a friendly environment than after the fact and without context,\u201d De Gori said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and the Financial Planning Association (FPA) have been meeting with other industry associations, including those which have been critical of advisers, for more than a year to shape discussions around the education and professional standards of advisers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282,8],"tags":[4247],"class_list":["post-32163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-associations","category-compliance-regulation","tag-feature","headers-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}