In a hearing on Tuesday, committee chair Tim Wilson said he and his colleagues had received “so many complaints” around FASEA processes and consultation from constituents that he believed it would be worthwhile bringing the authority under the permanent oversight of the committee.
“There has been a constant frustration with the FASEA board and [advisers] feeling that they can dictate to the financial services industry without any accountability or feedback as part of their processes, particularly when introducing mandatory regimes pushing around long-term advisers who are capable of doing their jobs, but have been dictated to about qualifications they need within relatively short time frames,” Mr Wilson said.
“There is so much strong feedback directly from advisers to members of Parliament, they feel they have no capacity to have informed participation in decision-making.”
FASEA chief executive Stephen Glenfield pointed to the authority’s obligations under the Corporations Act, saying it had little room to move in the way it had enacted legislation related to the FASEA standards within the required time frames.
“FASEA has taken into account the view of stakeholders before promulgating the standards that are required by the Corporations Act,” Mr Glenfield said.
“FASEA is given a role to put these standards in place – there was no grandfathering provision [in the legislation], so we are enacting our role in the Corporations Act to put into place these standards. In terms of the ability to give exemptions, we don’t have that provision.”
Mr Wilson suggested the House economics committee be given permanent oversight of FASEA in a similar way to its current oversight arrangements with ASIC, APRA and the Reserve Bank, which Mr Glenfield said the authority would have no objection to.
Mr Glenfield also acknowledged that the time frames given to FASEA under the legislation had been “very tight”.
“The release of standards was driven by the time frames in the legislation, we consulted twice through 2018 before they were released at the end of that year. I came to FASEA in September 2018 and in my view it was a big task to do in that time frame,” he said.
Like many that are considering the road ahead, I have been advising for over 35 years, no complaints, no PI losses, completed IPS 146, Diploma, Advanced Diploma, SMSF advice along with all the other fluff that you need to entertain from one year to the next. CPD and CPE to support capabilities through this ever-improving program of continuing education. I have not sat the FASEA exam, But no doubt will need to. However, my aggravation stems from a collective of politicians, that often have no formal qualifications, (not that you need to have them, to be a politician), are in the front line for less than 6 years, telling me (advisers) that I need further and more defined education programs in order for me to continue (past 2026?) to do the job that I have done, well for years.
And what’s worse, it has happened to the advice industry because as a group, there has been no political representation. Our Associations (are lucky to) establish middle ground, not outcomes.
Beats me why anyone is a member of the FPA. If that organisation had any sort of spine in the initial stages of the FASEA regime then a lot of this wouldnt be happening instead they rolled over and were yes boys. Any members should seriously be considering whether you are actually getting any value for money at all from that membership fee.
I would like to provide some background from FASEA and the study. Firstly, I am all for education and the changes. I have learnt a few handy things to bring into my business from the ethics course. The course isn’t of a “postgraduate standard” in my opinion and more like a 1st year uni course. What a money grab.
I am a “newish” planner with a very busy practice. I have a B.Com and MBA from a Top University and even received academic prizes. Doing simply just one ethics course – for which I am only required to do – has absolutely killed me. Family + business + study has been a struggle. I cannot imagine having to do any more than one course even with all the study experience that I have. For heavens sake, how is everyone else supposed to do it? Just suck it up is not fair on anyone…
Why existing related Degree well qualified and experienced advisers are being made to waste time and money on this Ethics course & Exam is a complete freaking joke.
Let me be an Adviser for 22 years and now tell me i’m not qualified. FARSEA OFF !!
GET STUFFED O’Dwyer, and FARSEA. Seriously get stuffed.
1 Ethics course costs $1600 + 120 hours x $330 = $39,600.
Plus more time wasted for exam study, cost and time to do = $50K total.
Sorry my existing education is fine and was expensive enough in time and hours:
– B.Econ & Bus Law,
– Full DFP,
– SMSFA Specialist education & accreditation ,
– Estate Planning specialist adviser education & accreditation,
– 22 yrs Adviser Experience,
– 22 years CPD,
– 15 years AFSL Responsible Manager and more RM CPD.
Yep I’m not qualified anymore FARSEA.
FIX THIS CRAP Liberal party – NOW !!!!!!!!!!!
It surprises me how much people whinge in this industry you do realise other professions such as accounting have to complete CA/CPA while they work full time have a family and a business yet none of them whinge and moan like we do those accounting post graduate courses are a lot harder than ours so get on with and complete it or get out of the industry
Yep and that’s part of the problem it’s basic first year Uni level education that provides zero benefit to those already well educated.
And if you are already well educated – besides propping up lower Uni fees whats the benefit ??
How about All the Pollies be forced to do a Uni Degree and Post Grad top up and an Exam and of course we all know they need to do Ethics – the bloody lot of them.
Advisers don’t seem to comprehend that the regulation will be reduced once they stop receive commissions at all, stop pushing clients into the same product, none are linked to product providers and they stop charging asset based fees. Advisers themselves are holding up reduced regulation.
How are you going to deal with the Advisers working for Industry Super? Have you thought of that when developing your argument?
Agree. The best solution is to split advisers into two camps. The first have no affiliation or receive commission from product providers. They should be able to provide advice free of the regulatory burdens currently in place. This group should be classified as financial advisers.
The second group are aligned/take commissions. They are upfront about who owns them and should be classed as financial product salespeople. No need to be burdended by the regulations as people know that if they go to an IOOF adviser they will get sold IOOF products.
Both groups will be ok, but at least the consumer will know what they are getting.
A complete FARSEA !!!
FASEA’s education standards are ridiculous and all they will achieve are greater $-flows to the educational institutions who teach nothing but worthless theory that’s largely useless in practice and the real world. Having educators and politicians dictate terms of what’s required will never result in practical nor logical outcomes. I applaud Tim Wilson’s response, though he probably doesn’t realise what a useless mess ASIC has become either – it’s practically become the Gestapo of Australia.
Im an adviser, and decided to get on the front foot with my education when all this started. a big risk, but decided it was a good idea. Masters completed in September last year, and 100% i am a better adviser for it now. I learnt a lot over the 12 months or so, and have implemented many of the learnings into my business.
How clever you were to delay getting properly educated for your job until it became compulsory. Those that did so voluntarily years ago, because it was the right thing to do, have been forced to repeat much of our education to line the pockets of corrupt FASEA Board members.
I have completed formal tertiary education pre and post FASEA regulation and have a Masters. The Financial Planning coursework is a joke. It was written by educators with no real experience, lacks any soft skills and is certainly a great money spinner for Universities. I engaged a tutor once throughout my Masters (goodness know why), everything else was online, out of date or context and generally irrelevant. The FASEA exam is also a joke, why set a specific education standard and then have a separate exam? Is completing a Masters not enough?
If you had a bachelors degree or higher in financial planning you wouldn’t have to repeat any study of course but I’m guessing you went down the easy diploma path, so don’t act all high and mighty when you did the bare minimum necessary. There has been plenty of advisors who have gotten degrees after these changes that I know of and although it was hard they all agree it was worth it. The only people whinging are the people who have done the bare minimum and now need to lift their game, having until 2026 to complete study is more than enough time.
you really are an uninformed idiot. those planners have been doing cpd.
I have real degrees from real universities supplemented by specific financial planning training. The same training approach that accountants and doctors take.
Financial planning “degrees” are second rate qualifications from third rate “universities”. A plumbing course at TAFE would have more academic rigour.
It’s crazy to think this whole time it has never been about education. This has all come about because of that small percentage that have taken advantage of their clients. Who are now probably long gone. Now all the good ethical, passionate planners who want nothing but the best for their clients have to pay.
It has been sad to see so many good planners leave the industry and so many more planning on leaving.
The worst thing is, it will be the clients who end up paying for all of this
Me thinks it is all as a result of the big 4 Banks Ex-Planner……
too true, but do you think the vested interests care? Of course not.
FASEA is a debacle.
These complaints more so reflect on the systematic failure of bodies such as the FPA to provide effective representation. Advisers should not be having to lodge complaints with FASEA or be writing to FASEA. That is the role of a professional association. We don’t have a Professional Association in Australia and yet individuals continue to pay their fees. I would encourage advisers to resign from the FPA otherwise over regulation will just continue.
In time, some of the regulation will be wound back. However this will take time because it will only wound back after many members of the public start complaining to the powers that be about 1. How difficult it is to procure an adviser and/or 2. The cost of advice. I reckon this will take 5 to 10 years.
you are totally correct. there will be fewer than 5,000 left. and they will charge premium rates, and they should, they should try to extract as much money as possible for at least 10 years until things settle down.
they will go broke.
ASIC’s grand plan is for Accountants to deliver strategic advice to clients (called tax advice) and for those Australians after receiving advice to buy products direct. That could be an industry super fund, a call centre selling insurance or even an AMP call centre selling products only. The role of a Financial Planner, providing advice and product is purposely being culled. This is of course unless you pull your finger out and get proper representation.
Have just sent a link to this article to 8 Senators and 2 Members drawing attention to the “Comments”section. Have implored these people to heed the comments etc.
Suggest all contributors below and readers, get off your collective butts, and do the same…will avoid the need for stamps and unreliable postage service.
The more noise we make will force our friends in Canberra to listen and do something about the myriad of wrongs in this industry.
Did ya send it to Shaoquett Moselmane ?
No…. ASIO have his computers
waste of time – no votes for them in this issue
Heres an idea just get rid of them.
The grandstanding politicians like Wilson?? 100% agree. It was his govt that brought this legislation in. Despite what Wilson says, they LNP are no friend of the small business adviser.
I am a youngish adviser, already fasea degree qualified, and passed the exam. do not take these politicians at their word.
they are just protecting themselves. Tim Wilson and others who are vocal and seem to be speaking on behalf of us are not, they are just covering themselves for the inevitable, the answers and accountability in 2024 when there are less than 5,000 advisers remaining and 0 supply
he must be tuning into the weekly numbers from adviser ratings and thinking, this farce is going to blow up in our face so better start blaming somebody else.
advisers on the whole are doing the right thing. we should, as we are, should be leaving in droves from this shit fight.
unacceptable conditions, incompetent regulator, incoherent set of rules, if it were imposed on anyone else they would have had a violent fit, yet we continue to just accept this bull shit. no more, I am getting out. thank god.
yes, the exodus continues.
advisers here is your chance, every 22,000 of us should be posting a 1.10 cent stamped letter to tim wilson. 22,000 in total and no more and no less expressing the dissatisfaction with both fasea and asic it is disgusting
the comments of “OH Please” are wrong as only 25% of advisers have done the exam. This is the typical thinking where nobody is responsible. Why would the Economics Committee being wanting to straighten up FASEA if it was doing such a fantastic job. If Glenfield does not get his act together, then the Government will focus on someone who will look after Advisers not a bunch of academics. He needs to get this exam sorted or he will be gone in 3 months.
“”FASEA has taken into account the view of stakeholders before promulgating the standards that are required by the Corporations Act,” Mr Glenfield said.”
That’s a stretch of the truth- no Advisers have been allowed to attend FASEA feedback meetings. Somehow they don’t consider the the very people that they exist for to be “stakeholders”.
Can’t help thinking that in the above Glenfield comes across as very weak and eager to blame everyone else. I would have expected someone in his position to accept more responsibility. Maybe he does and its not visible here?
When the CEO & Board of FASEA are boxed in by a legislated timeline imposed by Government, how much can you do? It was the government, not FASEA, who legislated that all advisers must do the exam by 31 Dec 2020. It was the govt that said all advisers must be Degree qualified or equiv. It is govt that has set the relevant education framework by which degree equivalent is judged.
There’s a lot of anger in these comments and rightly so. Such a shame the good, hard working advisers have left their clients, who need them. I wonder how many of these clients will end up on the pension instead of being self-funded retirees. Isn’t self-funded retirement part of the plan surely?
We all know Academics are hopeless with Clients and don’t have common sense. Ask your self one question, how many academics really make it in this world? I worked with One and he was scared to talk to Clients when they lost money! A Degree is only a piece of paper. 20 Years in business is a Profession and Experience money cant buy.
they are hopeless. that’s why they live in the make-believe world of academia and bureaucracy they could not be further removed from the real world
very right you are Marty.
It’s too late for this. Most advisers have done the exam, met the CPD pts and even the education requirements if they want to stay in financial planning and most of the rest are in the process of an exit plan if they are older and don’t want to do more study. The industry or profession whatever you want to call it as I can tell you my clients could not care less, is at this point a place whereby you can develop anxiety really easily if you are prone to it – with less money to take home, more time taken that requires 80hr weeks rather than 40 – re: compliance burden and little to no respect due to all the bad publicity ASIC have given us – oh and yeah we’ve paid for that too in fees. CV19 and markets falling are not helping either. It’s everywhere these days – stupid decisions or making them far too late. Leadership is just not what it used to be.
Plenty have not yet done the study and many will be ready to retire by the time they finish, although added costs means advisers own retirement plans need to be reviewed as many will have to work longer if they are not driver out.
Ha! You couldn’t trust these clowns to run a chook ruffle at the local RSL Club, but here we are. They are running the joint and destroying the lives and businesses of many decent financial planners who have done nothing other than look after their clients for reasonable remuneration. Nothing could be clearer…the lunatics are running the asylum!
Glenfield is such a joke. He keeps trotting out the Nuremberg defence: I’m not responsible for the legislation, it’s thems who are above me who enacted it & I’m just doin’ me job. A true bureaucrat at heart and I’m sure Sir Humphery Appleby would be proud of his efforts. In fact he reminds me of John Banner (Sergeant Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes). I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!
It’s time to stop stuffing around with all this nonsense & get on with fixing things, otherwise what little industry there will be left after these knuckleheads have finished won’t be able to meet the demand for advice.
An excellent outcome for those advisers who are left, but not in the best interests of advice seeking Australians.
Oh, that’s right! All this rubbish they are going on with is supposed to make it easier & safer for Australians to obtain advice. Another sick joke perpetrated on the Australian public. Seriously, you wouldn’t feed this lot.
Which part of what Glenfield says is untrue? The government, of which Tim Wilson is a member, were the ones who put all this in place with the timeframes set into the legislation. The recent impasse in getting an extension passed VIA THE PARLIAMENT is an example of what was locked in by the government. All the rules were set out in the legislation well before they had even established the FASEA board, appointed any directors, employed any staff, etc etc
The people you should be directing your anger to are people like Tim Wilson, Kelly O’Dwyer, Josh Fraudenburg and the rest.
I find it pretty ironic that Tim Wilson said this “There has been a constant frustration with the FASEA board and [advisers] feeling that they can dictate to the financial services industry without any accountability or feedback as part of their processes, particularly when introducing mandatory regimes pushing around long term advisers who are capable of doing their jobs, but have been dictated to about qualifications they need within relatively short time frames,” Mr Wilson said. When it was his Government that enacted this legislation with its inherent timeframes!! Fix the legislation, don’t blame FASEA for overseeing it!!
Yep Over Bloody Complicated ODwyer our to Kill Advisers to make way for Direct Life Insurances and Robo Advice from Banks.
I don’t know much about Wilson, or if it will make any difference, but thank god we finally have some politicians who are hearing our cries for help. All power to Wilson and Amanda Stoker
22 years of being a Financial Advisor providing Holistic and full advice with NO COMPLAINTS from clients or prospects yet I’m forced to undertake study at my cost to prove to a bunch of academic’s that I act in my clients best interest and ethically. Academics that live in their own world detached from reality delay after delay in announcing the criteria and when you did eventually release the criteria for the exam they didn’t have the ethics to move to move the deadline by the 18 months it took them to make the release.
Currently doing the Ethics bridging course. Gobblegook such as deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics designed to sell text books with no practical use.
cracks me up to see we are studying the same thing.
is that ethical value or moral value..? LOL. OMG – i just though it was me – i am not alone.
As part of the FASEA Exam I asked to be provided the exam in written copy for medical reasons and was happy to sit under the same conditions for everything else, this was backed up with a Doctor’s professional advice that this was essential.
FASEA replied and [b]denied[/b][b][/b] the request saying they were not required to provide the exam in writing… how is this fair?
If you can’t use a computer, please leave the industry.
What part of medical reason don’t you understand?? Typical comment of a self entitled arrogant prick.
Great. Expect no favors from FASEA. Remember when ASIC got dragged over the coals at the Royal Commission. Their response was to hit advisers harder, not address the issues at hand. Expect the same from FASEA. Academics and public servants don’t like being shown up.
BTW – the correct pronunciation is ‘fussier’ – not ‘far-seer’. You are welcome…
“FASEA has taken into account the view of stakeholders before promulgating the standards that are required by the Corporations Act,” – Was that where they directly consulted with just ASIC, and not Advisers? How long has the board position, whom was an Adviser, been vacated for?
Clearly FASEA don’t want to consult with Advisers. We are left with academic drivel & ideology.
20 years in an industry I’m passionate about….Walking away with the BS that has been going on. Disgraceful!!!
and 20 years of BS too FSR and FPA started all this
Also just left the industry, its turned into a shambles. Nothing but infighting, constant change for the worse. Glad I’m out. CFP now feels like a massive waste of time.
Exactly – Cant soar like an eagle if you’re surrounded by geese
I couldn’t agree more. As a practitioner with over 30 years experience I have to study ethics and yet I am frequently sought out by less experienced practitioners to assist with ethical issues. This is beyond a joke. Someone should really check up on the value that FASEA provides from the adviser perspective. As far as I can see FASEA provides benefits to everyone other than advisers and because of the mass exodus of qualified advisers that will tell in the long run for members of the public that this regime was meant to protect. This should have been patently obvious to everybody when the legislation was first mooted Very sad.
Fasea is a toxic train wreck, frankly it should be totally pulled down, and re built under dare I say it! ASIC could do it better, can’t believe I said that, but the idiots with there own self interests at heart should all be terminated immediately, without any consultation, just as those jerks have done to us.
Over Bloody Complicated O’Dwyer and her complete and utter attempt to destroy Advisers to make way for Direct Life Insurance and Robo Financial Advice to be provided by the Banks.
That is the real drivers behind it all.
O’Dwyer & Frydenberg who both oversaw LIF, FARSEA and s.923A Independent Adviser Restrictions.
What an absolute complete and utter disaster.
What an absolute attack from ex Bank execs against IFA’s.
Disgusting work LIB’s & O’Dwyer.
[b]FIX IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/b][b][/b]
too late
Agree 1000%. For the first time I would have voted ALP…but comrade Shorten wasn’t too appealing. No win on that front, and our great association in the FPA and AFA are utterly useless…I hate to think where insurance premiums, and underinsura will be in the years ahead
My business partner also walked away from being an adviser after 30 years in the industry. He had enough of what a joke FASEA is and how we have all been mistreated.
Hey, Glenfield, you were called out in the Senate Estimates Committee last year when you couldn’t quote a single example of where an adviser had been given any recognition of prior education by way of CPD, as required under your mandate, to which you’re happy to keep referring. More than six months on, nothing’s changed! Do the job you were hired to do.
I have walked away, no point in arguing with a bunch of misinformed academics who think they know better than 38 years of coal face experience
wonderful grandstanding by Mr Wilson. Hard to take him seriously. Seems to love the cameras. Always takes his opportunity. Wish pollies would focus on the task and not self promotion.