Why are advisers paying more for the same exam?
With the amount of compliance the corporate watchdog has piled onto the financial advice industry in a bid to increase transparency and standards, it would be wise for the regulator to also walk the talk on disclosure.
This is especially given that the draft regulations of the Better Advice Bill revealed that once the financial adviser exam is moved from the Financial Adviser Standards and
Ethics Authority (FASEA) to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the fee to sit the exam will increase by almost 60%.
Next year, the financial adviser exam fee will rise by $354 to $948 and ASIC needs to explain why.
The reason they need to explain is the fact that the regulator had exponentially increased the ASIC levy over three years, before the Government decided to restore the levy to the 2019 level, for the reason that there were less advisers and that most advisers were not associated with the litigation the levy funded.
Many of the advisers who have left the industry have done so due to the amount of red tape the regulator has introduced.
Not only this, ASIC representatives recently told a Parliamentary committee that they “deeply cared” about the costs being borne by financial advisers but now have increased the fee for advisers to sit the compulsory exam.
Another reason the regulator should be explaining how they worked out the fee is because the cost to remark non-multiple choice answers has remained the same at $218.
Advisers that continue to be “existing” on the Financial Adviser Register but not a “relevant provider” and intend on sitting the exam next year may need to rethink their strategy as the booking period for the last exam of 2021 closes at the end of October.
However, the draft regulations did include some sensible changes such as the removal of the three month waiting period before a person could resit an exam as well as the addition of more flexibility around how a person chooses to sit the exam.
Recommended for you
In this episode, hosts Maja Garaca Djurdjevic and Keith Ford take a look at what’s making news in the investment world, from President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations to Cbus fronting up to a Senate inquiry.
In this new episode of The Manager Mix, host Laura Dew speaks with Claire Smith, head of private assets sales at Schroders, to discuss semi-liquid global private equity.
In this episode of Relative Return, host Laura Dew speaks with Eric Braz, MFS portfolio manager on the global small and mid-cap fund, the MFS Global New Discovery Strategy, to discuss the power of small and mid-cap investing in today’s global markets.
In this episode, hosts Maja Garaca Djurdjevic and Keith Ford are joined by special guest Steve Kuper to dive deep into the recent US election results and what they mean for the world.
