ASIC urged to enforce RG 146

By Justin Lim

Financial services industry figures have called on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to begin enforcing the minimum training requirements as stipulated under Regulatory Guidance 146 (RG 146), claiming that many training institutions have made it far too easy for candidates to attain the accreditation.

Pinnacle Academy managing director John Prowse said that while RG 146 itself was adequate for general advice, many training programs in the market fell short of ASIC’s expectations.

“As it stands, RG 146 is fine, the actual words in the statement aren’t wrong, it covers what needs to be covered … it just needs to be enforced,” he said.

Without enforcement, many registered training organisations (RTOs) “had fallen short of ASIC’s RG 146”.

“For example, there is a course at the moment offering people with no industry experience a diploma after nine days of face-to-face training and four days of self study. So in less than two weeks you can become RG 146 compliant, despite the guidance stating that a diploma should take one to two years full time to complete.”

According to Prowse, RG 146 does not work under the current regime of self regulation.

Under RG 146, an RTO in the financial services industry is automatically considered an ‘ASIC authorised assessor’, which entitles it to assess courses as compliant, including its own.

“That’s how you get on the ASIC register for compliant courses; we put them on ourselves. That’s fine, as long as there is a proper audit process in place,” he said.

“Why are both the training regulators and ASIC tolerating this? RG 146 is supposedly a statement of how ASIC wants the system to run and yet they seem uninterested in it.”

Financial Planning Association deputy chief executive Deen Sanders agreed and said there was considerable confusion in the market over what RG 146 accreditation actually means.

“Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons [why] many in the industry have some discomfort with RG 146 programs; there is no independent and reliable quality mechanism for people to discern whether a program is any good or not,” he said.

Sanders said there were several things ASIC could do to address the issue, such as improve the rigor of assessment for programs “to ensure that users of the education could be more confident in the quality of education they’re purchasing”.

“They should also be constantly refreshing and reviewing the ASIC register to ensure that only current programs and providers are listed,” he said.

“And encourage new entrants to the industry to pursue professionally relevant programs and credentials rather than the minimum competence required to enter.”

n For an in-depth look at education standards in the industry see the education feature starting on page 14.