FPA to work on weakness in member engagement

THEFinancial Planning Association (FPA)will hold a meeting of its 31 chapter chairs to combat what it sees as problems communicating with its membership base.

FPA general manager of member services Rohan Burgess has admitted the FPA needs to address deficiencies in the way it has engaged with its membership up until now, at the association’s recent Queensland state conference.

He says the association has been ignoring its regional contingents and sending a bad message to its membership.

According to Burgess, the chapters are the association’s “sleeping giant” and it will need to “encourage the troops” in order to get them working for it.

Burgess says the association also needs to better articulate the value of membership and generally improve its communication.

The challenge will be to completely reorganise the way the association engages with its membership in order to connect with it more effectively, Burgess says.

The comments follow FPA chief executive Ken Breakspear’s warning to the membership at the conference, when he said those members who did not want to live by the rules should be removed because they did not deserve to belong to the association.

At the time, Breakspear also announced the establishment of a boutique dealer member forum to support them in the areas of licensing and compliance.

The focus on supporting boutique groups comes as a result of an FPA self-assessment following the recent damning Australian Consumers’ Association andAustralian Securities and Investments Commissionreport into advice quality.