FPA and AFA will take highly-charged feedback to FASEA

Both the Financial Planning Association (FPA) and the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) are recording the highly charged feedback of members on the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) guidance on qualification pathways to deliver counter-arguments during the upcoming consultation period.

AFA chief executive, Phil Kewin said that as well as taking account of the member feedback on the FASEA proposals, his organisation would be conducting a survey of its members to determine the impacts of the FASEA approach when weighed against the qualifications already held by advisers working in the industry.

FPA chief executive, Dante De Gori pointed to the importance of the consultation period but noted that under the qualification pathways outlined in the FASEA guidance up to 45 per cent more planners were being impacted than most had originally envisaged.

Kewin said that the AFA regularly surveyed its members, but the nature of the FASEA proposals were such that it was important to have a fresh exercise to collect hard data which could be put before FASEA as part of the consultation process.

Both De Gori and Kewin said the most important thing was to retain the best qualified and most experienced planners in the industry at a time when all the available data was pointing to a high demand for good financial advice.

Kewin said it was hardly surprising that there had been a highly-charged reaction to the FASEA guidance because it had serious doubt into the minds of people who had developed significant businesses and careers.

De Gori said that the most concerned feedback had been received from people who had significant degree-level qualifications and years in the industry but who fell outside the pathways outlined in the documentation issued by FASEA late last year.

“We want the best qualified and most experienced planners to remain in the industry, and the consultation process is going to be important because we don’t want a situation where we have a lot of highly-qualified planners who don’t have a lot of experience,” he said.

De Gori said he believed the consultation with FASEA over the transitionary arrangements had to be based on what was practical and reasonable and what would get the balance right.

He also agreed that licensees and dealer groups would have a role to play in helping ensure that good planners made the transition and remained in the industry.