The financial services industry needs to pay more attention to the minimum training requirements around aged care advice but it should be self-regulated by the industry, according to Aged Care Steps.
Director, Assyat David said her firm was working with the industry to formulate industry standards to create self-regulation rather than a legal legislative instrument.
“That way then you can have the right standards in place put in around aged care but I certainly think it’s an area that does require specialist training in that space,” David said.
“It’s not as regulated as something like giving tax advice. Advisers need to go and become registered tax advisers if they want to give certain types of tax advice so it’s not regulated to that extent.”
David did not believe aged care training should not be embedded in the new professional and educational standards as part of the Corporations Amendment (Professional Standards of Financial Advisers) Bill 2016, as the education requirements were for those advice services that were product-based, whereas aged care could be classified as strategic advice.
“Aged care still fits in as a broader educational requirement in the sense that the dealer group needs to ensure they’ve got upfront knowledge and accreditation, but importantly on an ongoing basis, they have a certain number of CPD [continuing professional development] points accredited to aged care to ensure they keep their currency of the information on aged care,” David said.
David applied the same principle when asked about the licensing requirements for providing aged care advice services, and said the current licensing rules were built around product advice and gave authority to provide advice on certain product categories.
“However, where something like aged care is more strategic, similar to estate planning, similar to other kinds of strategic advice, it doesn’t really fit neatly with the product-based licensing advice regulations,” she said.
