{"id":71648,"date":"2024-06-03T10:29:26","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T00:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=71648"},"modified":"2025-03-14T12:02:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T01:02:20","slug":"cali-confirms-minimum-qualification-position-for-insurer-advice-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2024\/06\/03\/cali-confirms-minimum-qualification-position-for-insurer-advice-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"CALI Confirms Minimum Qualification Position for Insurer Advice Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Issues around minimum standards for \u2018qualified advisers\u2019 drew a lot of interest from Riskinfo readers this week\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Peak life industry body, CALI<\/a>, has confirmed its position on the minimum educational qualification required for employed life company staff who will be providing limited financial advice in future.<\/p>\n

Speaking only for the life companies, CALI CEO,\u00a0Christine Cupitt<\/strong>, said the council had thought deeply around the needs of life company customers and the complexity of the service they would like to provide to them and believe the Australian Qualifications Framework Level IV Certificate<\/a> should be the minimum qualification level required for these qualified advisers.<\/p>\n

The customer need that we\u2019re trying to address is the need that we see every day<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
CALI CEO, Christine Cupitt, speaking earlier this year to advisers at the Sydney leg of the Riskinfocus Risk Advice CPD Tour …emphasising the complementary rather than competing role envisaged for employed life company advice staff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The customer need that we\u2019re trying to address is the need that we see every day,” said Cupitt, adding that policy holders contact life company call centres with basic or simple questions about the nature of their cover and how to navigate simple choices around cover maintenance such as top-ups or reductions.<\/p>\n

…it\u2019s not anywhere near the same sort of complexity that a risk adviser would provide<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In reference to the respective roles played by employed qualified adviser staff and authorised representatives, Cupitt said “We believe that this is an important service but it\u2019s not anywhere near the same sort of complexity that a risk adviser would provide when helping their customer navigate those complex financial needs.”<\/p>\n

Cupitt added another key point is that in addition to the formal AQF Level IV Certificate qualification, licensees – including life insurers – have enforceable legal obligations to adequately train, monitor and supervise their team, which would include in-house training on products, the advice process and compliance controls:<\/p>\n

“And that in-house training is ongoing. It\u2019s not a set and forget process. Licensees need to be continually thinking about whether they\u2019ve got appropriately qualified team members,” added Cupitt.<\/p>\n

Role of Financial\/Risk Advisers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cupitt also emphasised the very strong view held by CALI that financial advisers and risk advisers play an essential role in helping people navigate complex financial needs, “…and that there is a very clear distinction between that work and what we\u2019re proposing to provide.”<\/p>\n

a significant objective here is to make sure that customers understand the very big distinction between the advice they get from a financial adviser …and what they can expect from their life insurer<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She said CALI believes customers will be able to understand that distinction. “But we really want to be clear that a significant objective here is to make sure that customers understand the very big distinction between the advice they get from a financial adviser or a risk adviser and what they can expect from their life insurer.”<\/p>\n

Cupitt said the aim of life company-employed qualified advisers was to complement the important work performed by authorised representatives “…and help people with those day-to-day questions about their cover.”<\/p>\n

Mandated as part of the rollout of those elements of Michelle Levy’s Quality of Advice Review recommendations accepted by the Government, life companies will be joining banks and superannuation funds in their ability to employ salaried staff – currently referred to by Financial Services Minister, Stephen Jones<\/strong>, as ‘qualified advisers’ – to deliver limited personal advice to bank customers, super fund members and life company policy holders.<\/p>\n

Riskinfo will report further developments during this industry consultation phase, where there appears to be a range of views about a number of issues, including:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • What the minimum qualifications should be for qualified advisers<\/li>\n
  • Whether that minimum qualification should be the same across life companies, banks and super funds or whether, because of the different nature of the inquiries, different minimum qualifications may be appropriate<\/li>\n
  • How, in practice, the qualified adviser can determine at what point their simple or limited advice conversations become sufficiently complex to the extent that a referral to an authorised representative would be required<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Issues around minimum standards for \u2018qualified advisers\u2019 drew a lot of interest from Riskinfo readers this week\u2026 Peak life industry body, CALI, has confirmed its position on the minimum educational qualification required for employed life company staff who will be providing limited financial advice in future. Speaking only for the life companies, CALI CEO,\u00a0Christine Cupitt, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":71759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282,8,8291],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-71648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-associations","8":"category-compliance-regulation","9":"category-story-of-the-week"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71648","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=71648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}