Speaking to ifa, Mentor Education chief executive Mark Sinclair said the anxiety many advisers are currently experiencing may stem from a misunderstanding about what the new state-mandated regime will likely require.
“My message is to be calm and wait and see what the final outcome is,” Dr Sinclair said. “You might only have to do a few units, meaning just 10 or so hours a week. It’s not that hard, it’s not that scary.”
Dr Sinclair said he expects education providers to take prior professional experience into account when determining the course of study an individual adviser may be required to undertake.
“Technically, if you can show you have five years’ experience or more, and can demonstrate quality of advice and have supervisor statements confirming to that effect, than the provider of the qualification will give you partial credit for that experience,” he said.
“So for those that completed their qualifications more than 10 years ago and believe they may have to do a full graduate diploma or master’s, that is not necessarily the case if they can demonstrate experience in the units of study.”
The comments follow a communication issued by the AFA to members earlier this week, which also sought to quell anxiety among financial advisers ahead of the new regime.
“The comment expressed by many and covered in recent trade media articles that a degree that is older than 10 years will not count is simply false,” AFA chief executive Philip Kewin said.
“Advisers with older degrees will still be able to get recognition for them, although they are likely to need to do a bridging course of some form.”
Like Mentor Education, the AFA has advised that members “wait and see” the final post-consultation fine print from FASEA before enrolling in courses with the intention of complying with the new standards.
Deakin University associate professor Adrian Raftery recently told ifa he expects the so-called 10-year rule will be one of the elements in FASEA’s preliminary guidance that will be “first to go” following the public consultation.
FASEA is yet to release information about the timeline and format of the consultation process.
My message is for all CFP ‘s is that we want this for all existing holders as the degree equivalent , no more no less . [b]stand up and fight[/b] . Michael West
Will do.
“All” CFPs? Sounds like you are trying to sneak through the undereducated grandfathered CFPs on the qualifications of the well educated majority. FASEA is wise to this, and it’s why Sanders emphasises the difference between “designation” and “qualification”.
If there were no grandfathered CFPs, then it would be simple and logical for FASEA to provide full exemption for CFP holders. But unfortunately FPA’s stubborn defence of undereducated grandfathered CFPs over the years has significantly devalued the designation for everyone.
The simple solution is for FPA to downgrade all grandfathered CFPs to Associate status until they have completed a degree and the CFP course. Grandfathered CFPs have had 20 years to voluntarily get a professional level of education. If they chose not to, they should no longer be allowed to devalue the professional designation.
Its is interesting that other professionals in medicine or law are not required to re-complete elements of their degrees… Further education is vital to all professions however, retraining is usually advocated when there is a mistake or fault. Refresher short-courses may be advised but to update a degree by doing it again is completely out-of-step. Further, which successful financial adviser has 10 hours per week for study on top of CPD?
[b]Unfortunately the most likely outcome from all this uncertainty is the emergence of Vulture Funds ready to swoop in and buy up under-valued practices when the exodus starts in 2021 or so. Transitional arrangements that dismiss or undervalue experience will drive down business valuations IMHO.[/b][c[color=black][/color]olor=purple][/color]
And transitional arrangements that dismiss or undervalue prior education will have an even greater effect. I suspect the number of practice owners being forced to get their first degree is relatively minor compared to the number being forced to get another degree.
I would beg to differ, the amount of practice owners who currently hold a degree that I have seen if very little and those that do in most cases hold a unrelated degree.
Most advisers will struggle with the University system. Private Sector education involves learning from the leading subject matter expert in a specialist area, leading a class of experienced advisers sharing their own experiences in real time. Usually, delivered with the latest cutting edge technology. Often it involves a some type of assessment or exam with instant feedback usually completed with the advisers own tools and computer software. Whilst, Universities call this cutting edge software “pens”.
Usually University education is taught by someone who was teaching Accounting Theory for 40 years with about one years real life experience who as a result of University cut backs has now landed a job teaching a Unit in Financial Planning where they have managed to place into google “contribution caps” Universities think they are cutting edge learning, offering online technology blah blah, but they are about 10 years behind the time. That’s what happens when you put in place a guy from a Uni and you ignore representations from Private sector organisations.
“Dr” Mark Sinclair has not only never provided financial planning advice (like ever) nor worked in the financial services industry (like ever), but his Dr is a DBA. It’s like Diet Coke, not the real thing. Of course he has run an education business in financial services. But if you dig deeper, you will find he entered into a Part 10 Act of bankrupty on the 9th August 2012. Google RG146 Training Australia insolvency and it is published on ASIC. You will see administrators were appointed, and good old Dr Mark was CEO and Sole Director at the time. He is far from the model advocate financial advisers should be listening to.
wow… could you post this more frequently. He really should not be on FASEA at all.
Great attention to detail…Mark Sinclair is not on FASEA.
Bachelors completed and masters near completion, whilst working with a family. Was not a struggle at all… I understand there is alot of BS for those with existing financial planning degrees, but those with a tafe certificates stop complaining as you have ridden the easy wagon way to long.
Most advisers I know have degrees and post graduate studies and also spent thousands on CPD training via private training organisations. Whilst, yes, some advisers have little more than 4 subjects to meet RG146 requirements I have found these advisers are now in the minority. Perpetuating this myth only feeds Government intervention like FASEA. Will you be re-doing your degree now that it is totally useless according to FASEA? ,…and by 2024 it will be a dinosaur ? Why would you do a Masters when you risk it being null, especially by 2024. What about by 2020 when a “Bachelor of Advisory Skills” is the latest marketing idea and a Bachelor of Financial Planning being… oh so 2014.
HMMM what a sad person you must be. So many good even great advisers out there, not for their qualifications hanging on a wall, rather their ability to work with clients and produce plans of high quality due to years of experience and knowledge. Many of them will struggle to stay in the industry for no reason other than it makes people like you feel better. Thousands of Australians will go without advice or pay massive fees as a result of these changes and that’s OK with you because “it was easy for me”. Sad simply because you have no care, consideration or empathy for your fellow advisers. Show some respect. If you can’t keep your comments (which make you feel better and make others feel worse and nothing else) to yourself.
Its not about who feels sorry for who? would you go see a doctor, surgeon or lawyer who only had a diploma which was attainable in just a few days? Dealing with peoples financials on such an intimate level involves technical skill, soft skills and yes time on the job. But honestly if you hold a DFP or ADFP only, get up and get some higher education… stop trying to make people feel sorry for you when you didn’t do a degree.
Yep, absolute calamity as it stands for those who have a degree that isn’t recognised but hard to feel for those with only a DFP/ADFP. I was one of those people but got on my bike and finished a masters in a couple years while working long hours. If advisers are as good as they say through experience, they will breeze through the required study.
Has anyone else resigned from the FPA or AFA other than just me?
i am calling for a 1,000 resignations
I am awaiting till the end of the year when renewals are due.
No point renewing my CFP. I am out at renewal time.
Im [b]OUT[/b]!! Where’s the rest of you?! If you are not out you are supporting the cause of the problem. Wakey wakes guys!
It is an insult to my 30 plus years experience and my exceptional knowledge that your 10 hours comment is just thrown out there like it is so trivial. It is not needed. It’s
unnecessary and nothing more than a business development opportunity that has been scammed by the FPA and like bodies who have sat around rubbing their hands with glee at the fee generating opportunity for them ahead via this stealth like scare campaign. Get off your behinds and start working for your members you opportunist scammers.
You know education is not the fix this industry needs. Morals and ethics is all that is missing from rogue advisers to dodgy dealers and scamming industry bodies focused on growing their business.
Leave good advisers alone you pathetic industry leeches.
GO STEVEN!!! Too many politically correct people bleating around the place. More comments and attitudes like yours needed and maybe we can scare or wake up the leeches of whom you speak. Well done on saying what needs to be said Steven! Too true, every syllable!
[quote=Educated adviser]And yet I managed to complete a degree over the past four years while working 60 hour weeks and raising a young family while my husband worked shift work…. where there is a will, there is a way. [/quote]
Not sure what your aim is here. Are you trying to shame other advisers for not living their lives in a manner you expect? Or you want a trophy because you did it with lots on your plate? Your situation is your own, well done that you managed it. Personally, I could not dedicate an additional 10 hours to study, I already operate on a permanent sleep deprivation and there are far more urgent tasks in my to do list. I do believe in education, hence why I ensured I went above and beyond before having kids and starting a business as I knew my time would become sparse. Now I’m being told that I require extra study as my previous efforts (which went above and beyond) are no longer recognized despite continuing CPD?
I guess I should also post as “Educated Adviser” the only difference between us was I put in effort earlier, and am now being penalized for it… and I am not putting down other advisers because the idea of finding 10 hours a week to study (not to mention the cost) with no benefit to me or my clients strikes me as ridiculous.
No benefit to your clients if you obtain a higher technical ability in your line of work?
You like all the academics assume that doing the same degree again increases your technical ability. It does not. How does an adviser with a degree, a masters, CFP, CPD and over 10 years experience in the real world increase technical skills by doing a basic financial planning degree again?
Its not just refreshing basic technical skills but looking at those higher skills such as portfolio construction, estate planning and tax planning where more technical ability helps the client so much more. I feel its more so targeting those advisers who have done a DFP or ADFP (which really could be done over a weekend).
I don’t agree with your point (although I believe advisers need higher qualifications). I have a degree and post graduate qualifications but it’s the 20 years of dealing with clients day in and day out, the numerous stock market crashes, the investments we’ve avoided, the on the job training, the privately run courses that are far better than any technical skills someone is going to learn at Uni. Go to Uni yes, but do it on the grounds of confirming knowledge, refreshing knowledge, learning something perhaps you don’t normally specialize in, and on the basis that we need to be a profession and the best way to do that is to lift entry requirements.If an adviser with 20 years experience thinks they’ll be gaining a great technical ability around those areas you mention they won’t.
FASEA – is that code for social justice warrior? – post modernist Marxism.
Code for FASCIST (FASEA – get it?!) Same difference.
The government is not getting it! Complicating rules and legislations in already complex environment will not yield desired results- affordable, accessible, quality advice to all Australians- FoFA has missed the point!
Of course it’s not that hard if you’re not the one who actually has to do any of the study.
We are used to the Hollywood hero statements “it will be ok” .. when in affect you are saying “don’t resist” and “do not advocate”. But what arewe truly resisting? We are not resisting a better standard. What we are resisting is a system that has failed to protect the consumer by manipulating facts. The real issue has never been education. It has always been immunity for product provides against bad products. But if we stick to the point..prove to me that my previous education is bad. Simple. Prove to me by spending 10 hours a week. 10 precious hours.. 10 hours that cost me $2000. 10 hours that will belong to my family every week. That will shift money from my pocket to the education system is actually going to produce a better me.
Here is a challenge Sinclair. Do your previous degree again. Just do it. Again. My argument is.. well… I say so. But don’t panic. Relax. It’s ok. Hollywood has told us it will always be ok.
With over 30 years experience in financial advising , I consider the FASEA legislation an assault on my civil liberties , an assault on my livelihood and an assault on the future of my employees . The legislation is over reaching when it results in experienced planners being dragooned into a course of education or alternatively being excluded from running their business due to lack of a degree. Its time to consult the lawyers as this legislation is discriminatory in the extreme . And as far as 10 hours a week a goes , this comment obviously comes from someone who has no idea about the time constraints already placed on advisers and the cost involved. I will be seeing my local member in the near future , as the legislation needs to be amended before it is too late .
IFA please immediately disclose how much Mentor Education pays you in advertising or other monetary or non-monetary benefits. Or is it that you just using them as you recognize the value of click-bait??
Hey guys dont worry, just find the extra 10 hours a week and thousands of dollars which Dr Sinclair would be happy to take off your hands. It doesnt matter if the study will actually improve your skills, improve outcomes for clients or fix the bad advice from unethical advisers who are clearly in the minority. Academics are a funny group.
I have been down this track with 2 universities already since December. Provided them with all my completed courses and qualifications over the last 18 years. I was told I could have 2 exemptions out of an 8 unit course by both. Things will need to change to match my experience with your article….just sayin
I agree with this.
I have started the process and will get 3 exemptions from a 10 unit course – that is based on over 10 years experience, the DFP, a bachelor degree in finance, a Master of Applied Finance, a Master of Business Research and I also hold the CFA qualification. Around 13 years of under-graduate and post-graduate study, and I managed to get 3 exemptions. Fantastic.
this is absurd. 15 years they told us we were not qualified so the lot of us went and got qualifications after qualifications. you already have two masters degrees. I have completed 3 and nearly finished with a 4th.
you want me to get a 5th and a 6th? how many is enough ?
look around you, there are very few “unqualified” advisers left.
We need people like you and Steve to write to the Minister. Please I am begging you. Just list your qualifications and state the absurdity of the legislation.Simple. Please don’t expect the FPA/AFA to do the right thing, they are deeply conflicted. We need you guys to highlight that advisers are highly educated and experienced already.
Why do we care what Mark Sinclair from Mentor Education has to say? Stop giving his company free publicity. Mentor Education don’t even offer any post graduate Financial Planning qualifications so he has nothing to do with FASEA and what financial planners need to achieve.
When Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants etc are told by their professional bodies that their ‘old’ degree qualifications are not relevant, despite having done all required CPD over the years, then I’ll believe this is not a money grab.
“Don’t worry, it won’t be so bad”. Really, Dr Sinclair.
If we let the water come to a boil gradually (do nothing), then by that point the standards will be set, and the frog will be cooked. And that would suit Dr Sinclair just fine.
To be clear, I’m a strong believer in high level of tertiary studies as part of our profession. I would just prefer to choose my specialisation/s rather than have some generic brain-dead revision foisted upon me at considerable time and cost.
The current FASEA proposal for existing advisers is a farce.
Just “10 hours a week” I don’t know what this guy does to have this amount of time free but I sure don’t with clients, family and a business but I sure don’t
he doesn’t have a clue. if you poll most advisers they will tell you they already do 60 hour weeks
And yet I managed to complete a degree over the past four years while working 60 hour weeks and raising a young family while my husband worked shift work…. where there is a will, there is a way.
Now imagine being told that you need to do it all again, for no good reason.
And I bet your life in that time was shit house
So in 10 years time you will be happy to repeat this process as the degree you hold is longer the preferred degree for the profession. I already hold a business degrees and post graduate diploma in economics plus the Diploma in FP (but when it was 6 subjects) – 30plus years of FP experience and Continuous education for that whole period…. yet as my Business Degree is not a B.Bus. FP then is is not a ‘relevant’ degree. The stupidity of the architects of Fasea is an affront to all experienced qualified advisers.
complying with stupidity is not genius. it is stupidity. this request from fasea is stupid. i am already qualified. if i listed my qualifications most would be red in the face as to how many academic and professional designations i have accumulated over the last 17 years.
i am already over qualified and unemployable elsewhere that is why i run my own show.
I did that too mate. It was a massive sacrifice. Now I am told that I have to go back again. How would you like it. That’s why advisers are outraged
Education Providers are merely looking to feather their own nests, with comments like those in this article.
Doctors and Lawyers and Accountants are not being told by their industry nor stutory bodies, that they have to complete new tertiary requirements.
Why, because they are continuously updating their education through Professional Development Programs. The same is true for the financial planning industry.
If the adviser can demonstrate continued adherance to CPD requirements, then that should be sufficient to confirm their knowledge is current. (FPA requires CFPs to submit their PD every three years for verification)
In fact, their knowledge will be superior to the people giving the lectures in University in many cases because they have been acquiring this knowledge over 20 to thirty years, and many of the lecturers in this space have been in the industry for much shorter time.
All these people saying “don’t worry it will all be OK” are clearly unaware of what’s been happening in financial planning over the last 5 years or so.
Every time some biased bureaucrat has come up with another piece of draconian, anti consumer, compliance to be imposed on financial planners, industry “experts” have said “don’t worry, those in charge will see sense, it won’t be as bad as you think”. And every time they were wrong! It has always turned out just as bad if not worse!
Patiently waiting around for the FASEA “consultation process” to run its course is a recipe for disaster. It allows conflicted bureaucrats to obfuscate and delay until their draconian measures sneak through. The only chance that planners and consumers have for a reasonable outcome is to flush FASEA out in the open early on. Call out their conflicts of interest. Go over their heads to make politicians and the media aware of the potential damage they are causing.
If FASEA’s message really is being misunderstood they need to clarify it right now. Planners know that a long, formalised consultation process is just a proven bureaucratic technique to shaft them.
The media isn’t going to care and will turn it into their own circus of misinformation. They’ve already painted our industry in a bad light to the public.
True, but I think they would also delight in the farce that FASEA has become. Forcing those with degrees to go back to university is so incomprehensible and out of line with the legislation, I think they could be interested. This is where we need the FPA or AFA to issue press releases and showcase some of the ridiculous stories of highly qualified advisers affected by this.