FPA sells knowledge to India

TheFinancial Planning Association of Australia (FPA)has finalised an agreement to sell its professional education program to the burgeoning Indian planning industry.

The FPA announced at its annual conference yesterday it had been in negotiations with the Association of Financial Planners of India (AFPI) since June of this year to make the FPA’s course material available to Indian advisers.

Under the arrangement reached between the two groups, the AFPI will adopt the FPA's Diploma of Financial Planning and Certified Financial Planner education program to suit its local industry.

FPA chief executive Ken Breakspear says the deal is a reflection of the continuing relevance of the FPA’s education program, first introduced in Australia in 1988.

"It's a positive endorsement that other countries want to tap into FPA's body of knowledge and use it to develop their own industries,” Breakspear says.

"In many countries, particularly in the South East Asia region, financial planning is growing at a rapid rate. To support this growth, it is imperative that their professionals have a good grounding in education and professional standards to ensure a strong and sound profession.”

The arrangement continues a strong involvement for the FPA with the financial planning industry in Asia, where it has previously assisted advisers in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore to establish Certified Financial Planner (CFP) standards.

The FPA’s senior manager of education and certification Ken Bruce, who is also Australia’s representative on the certification committee of the International CFP Board of Standards, says it is imperative for countries with infant financial planning industries to access relevant and relatively inexpensive education courses

"In developing their own courses, the capital outlay required to catch up with what the FPA has been doing for years would be huge,” he says.

"Therefore to be able to work with these organisations by sharing information and providing advice is beneficial for both financial planners and consumers in the long run."

The FPA, which has re-packaged its domestic 12 unit professional education program this year in order to keep up with new standards set by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), is also working with the International CFP Board of Standards to establish common CFP certification competency standards worldwide.