Enter ICAA as designation game heats up

The Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAA) expects more than 3,000 of its members to take up its new financial planning specialisation within five years.

Bill Tuck, the Institute's public profile director, has told Money Management that 20 per cent of its 15,200 members in public practice are expected to undertake the training to gain its CA - Financial Planning Specialist mark.

Tuck says one of the drivers of the new designation, which was launched at the Institute's inaugural financial planning conference last weekend, is "high levels of interest" from members, including many graduates who are keen to move into offering planning services.

To gain a CA - Financial Planning Specialist qualification, members will have to undertake postgraduate study through either the Institute or an approved university course. The details of these courses are yet to be finalised. The Institute says it will recognise current members' as holding planning accreditation until July 1 next year, provided they hold a proper authority or license through ASIC and have three years of planning experience.

The move brings the Institute in line with the Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants (ASCPA), which introduced its own planning accreditation in April. It also puts the accounting bodies in direct competition with the Financial Planning Association's (FPA) preferred mark - the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation.

However, the ICAA's acting executive director Allen Blewitt says there is no animosity between the Institute and the ASCPA; or the Institute and the FPA.

"We're not out to cut each others throats," he says.

Blewitt is hopeful the Institute and the FPA can work together on key areas such as educational standards to ensure consistency across the planning industry. He will not rule out the two groups working together in the future, should the regulatory bodies object to more than one designation for planners.

"We are talking with the FPA," Blewitt says.

However, FPA chief executive officer, Michael McKenna argues there is only room for one designation in the industry. He also questions the validity of the Institute's specialisation, which "is not to be equated with the introduction of a new designation".

"A specialisation merely indicates some additional knowledge of an area which is, in the case of financial planning, a specialist profession in its own right and should not be understood otherwise."

McKenna also says the CFP mark is the only designation widely adopted.

"By the close of 1999, there will be almost 3000 CFP practitioner members in the FPA: the large majority of current practitioner members. Many of these practitioners are CA or CPA members who have come to recognise the importance of gaining the appropriate designation to practice high level, qualified financial planning - CFP."