{"id":32763,"date":"2016-03-22T17:22:46","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T06:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=32763"},"modified":"2026-03-18T14:19:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T03:19:14","slug":"limited-advice-should-not-require-degree-qualification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2016\/03\/22\/limited-advice-should-not-require-degree-qualification\/","title":{"rendered":"Limited Advice Should Not Require Degree Qualification"},"content":{"rendered":"

Advisers who provide limited advice, including life insurance advisers, should not be required to undertake the same level of training as full service or holistic advisers according to the head of financial services training provider.<\/p>\n

Mentor Education, Principal, Dr Mark Sinclair<\/strong> said proposals to lift education, currently in draft legislation before Federal parliament, were long overdue but they should not create new hurdles for advisers who will only ever provide limited advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes no sense for those who provide limited advice, such as life insurance advisers, accountants providing superannuation advice, those who provide broking services, to do a full 24 unit bachelor level course,\u201d Sinclair said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes no sense for those who provide limited advice, such as life insurance advisers…to do a full 24 unit bachelor level course”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIf advisers are going to provide limited advice then they should be trained in the relevant core subjects to that advice, in the area of ethics and in the area of business and markets so they can understand the sector they have chosen to specialise in. Why make an adviser do a course for an area of unrelated advice?,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Mentor<\/a>
Mentor Education, Principal, Mark Sinclair<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sinclair also stated adviser association post-nominal qualifications should not be considered as \u2018degree equivalents\u2019 and calling them such would leave the advice industry open to ridicule stating, \u201cIf we play games with qualifications we just give ammunition to our critics at a time when a holistic adviser should be holding an actual degree\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, Sinclair said the four credits of the post nominal course together with the eight subjects in an Advanced Diploma course could be used as credits or exemptions towards a 24 subject Bachelor\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n

He also stated that while related qualifications \u2013 such as commerce or economics \u2013 may be used to enter the financial advice profession, under the new legislation advisers with these qualifications should be restricted to limited advice until they have attained a Bachelor of Financial Planning, with 24 relevant financial planning subjects.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf the 41 courses offered as pathways into financial advice none are offered as a distinct Bachelor of Financial Planning. They tend to be commerce or economics degrees with financial advice units added, which makes the financial advice training no different than a Diploma or Advanced Diploma,\u201d Sinclair said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile acknowledging there is angst amongst some sections, the reality is the financial advice industry simply cannot progress further, and take its place alongside trusted advisers such as accountants, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc., without appropriate and benchmarked higher education academic qualifications,\u201d<\/p>\n

He said any new education requirements \u201c\u2026should be contemporary and appropriate to both existing advisers and new industry entrants\u201d with a three year transition period to allow existing advisers, many who would already have around half of the necessary training, sufficient time to meet the higher benchmark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Advisers who provide limited advice, including life insurance advisers, should not be required to undertake the same level of training as full service or holistic advisers according to the head of financial services training provider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,248],"tags":[4247],"class_list":["post-32763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-compliance-regulation","category-training","tag-feature","headers-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32763","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=32763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}