About 80.6 per cent of candidates sitting the exam for the first time passed the October exam, compared with 85.8 per cent across all exams. Sixty per cent of the advisers re-sitting the exam passed on their second attempt, compared with 57 per cent across all exams. The exam saw an overall pass rate of 76 per cent, compared with 83 per cent across all exams.
“FASEA congratulates successful candidates on completing an important component of their education requirements under the Corporations Act during the current extraordinary circumstances,” said FASEA chief Stephen Glenfield.
“The overall pass rate of 76 per cent may be attributed to several factors. Firstly, the October exam attracted a much smaller cohort of advisers in general, combined with a higher than usual proportion of re-sitters. For first time exam sitters during October, the pass rate remained at the 80 per cent average.
Areas for improvement among unsuccessful candidates were concentrated in the sections “Financial Advice Regulatory and Legal Requirements” (including “assessing whether the adviser has appropriately scoped the advice” and “assessing whether advice recommendations meet the client’s best interests”) and “Applied Ethical and Professional Reasoning and Communication” (including “applying the Code of Ethics to advice scenarios identifying compliance and non-compliance” and “demonstrating an understanding of an adviser’s ethical obligations when advising on complex family structures”).
Over 1,000 advisers have registered for the January exam.
…if around 10,000 have passed meaning some 12,000 or so still to write….and only 1,000 registered for the next one….we might end up with a liitle over 11,000 advisers when this is all done and dusted.
Still another 6 more FASEA exam sittings in 2021 to go. Can’t call this race yet.
Having completed the Ethics course and studied for the exam, as a first time sitter having failed, I feel its all a money making exercise.
How are you supposed to know what areas to focus on for the next one with generic commentary and no transparency of your result?!! Such a JOKE
There’s three areas of study, if you’ve failed in any one of those areas, then they tell you that. If you’ve failed across all three areas, they tell you to do additional study in all three subject areas. It’s really not that hard….
It’s a pass or fail exam, so it doesnt matter if you were only 1 mark or 30 away from passing, you still failed. Treat it as though you failed bigly and study accordingly.
How can you study accordingly when everyone that failed the exam got the exact same generic feedback?
Study accordingly means to study study study, do some pre-exam workshops, etc. It’s a career ending exam if you dont pass in time, give it the attention it deserves. Approx 85% pass rate so far, so there’s only a few dummies in the woodpile that cant get their s*%t together….
Dropping pass rates. Are they start of a trend?
Well in general, the people who know their stuff just do it and get it out of the way. Those who know they’re s*&t put it off for as long as possible and live in a world of denial, hoping that magically the exam will just go away….or that there will be another extension for the useless….
I just did the exam and can say that after being in this industry for over 30 years I have never been more humiliated than by this farce.No respect and treated like a school kid.
Did you pass, Mike?
In my experience the ones who are screaming the loudest about how “unfair” “humiliating” & “farcical” these changes are, are the ones that are why these changes were implemented in the first place.
I passed on the first try in the first possible sitting with plenty of time to spare. I did find the exam a study in deliberate humiliation in many aspects. There are other ways to do professional exams.
Dont get how being asked to do an exam is humiliating…..
Agreed. The unpleasantness was in HOW it was run.
60% passing on the second go is a concerning statistic.
I wonder how old mate from Bondi who was in these pages after complaining to that waste of space Craig Kelly has been fairing in his third attempt to pass the exam…. I wonder if ASIC are looking at him a little bit closer seeing as he runs his own AFSL….if anyone should be able to pass this exam first time, its someone who operates a self-licensed business….
The FARCE continues…
Wouldn’t have been hard to predict this.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand this embarrassing rate is why the industry (not profession) is in this situation….
too right….
Not at all. The FASEA exam has absolutely nothing to do with advice competency or professionalism.
It’s all about deciphering the unnecessarily complex regulatory maze, which is hopefully about to be simplified. It’s a distraction that requires advisers to take time out from helping clients to tick a bureaucratic box.
I’ve passed the CFP exam, the FASEA exam, and numerous uni exams. The CFP exam is by far the most comprehensive and demanding test of adviser competency. It’s what the FASEA exam should have been.