The grants are intended to “grow relationships between the tertiary sector and the financial planning profession”, the FPA said in a statement, adding that the funding pool has tripled in 2017 up to $30,000.
“The FPEC Academic research grants are jointly sponsored by the Financial Planning Association of Australia, AMP and NAB, and recognise those that have demonstrated a commitment to encouraging the development of financial planning as an academic discipline in its own right,” the statement said.
There were four grant recipients in 2017; academics from RMIT and Deakin University studying ethical challenges in advice, academics from Griffith University working with Modoras Financial Performance mapping the advice needs of small business owners, another team from RMIT researching barriers to entry for women in advice, and a final team from Griffith University working with a recruitment firm on remuneration and demand for advisers.
FPA chief executive Dante De Gori said research into the advice industry was important to the industry’s development.
“Academic research is valuable to the profession and many of the projects have resulted in papers being published in the Financial Planning Research Journal. We congratulate the winners on their outstanding work,” he said.
In October, FASEA announced it would adopt the Financial Planning Education Council’s Curriculum and Approved Degrees list for its education standards.
The FPA’s CFP program will not meet the requirements for a qualification under this regime, but Mr De Gori told ifa that the industry body intends to lobby for a prior learning recognition framework, under which the CFP course would replace some of the full eight units of an approved course.
For years the FPA tells us the CFP is recognised as AQF level 8 study. The highest designation in our industry etc etc. Well a few thousand dollars later and a considerable amount of time out of my life, studying and passing exams, we discover it’s diddly squat.
We were initially told this was about cleaning up the DFP level advisers, we now discover it’s something else.
This is now an existential threat for the FPA. It’s p!** weak really.
I’m truly starting to believe the bigger agenda here is to weaken the FP industry altogether. And if the largest professional association is this weak and pathetic in representing our hard work, well I’m not sure I want to hang around.
I’ll be thinking twice now about whether I want to spend more of my hard-earned, and more months of my life, just so the goal posts get moved again.
The result will be not many FPs left. Which I’m sure is fine by a Labor Govt, and not a big deal for a Liberal Govt.
I have to disagree there is a lot of research which needs to be done in the industry. Honestly getting a AQF 7 isnt going to be hard to attain by 2024.. some advisers just need to pull their socks up and get to it.
Fair enough for those advisers who haven’t yet bothered getting an AQF7 qualification. But many of us have already spent lots of time and money getting multiple AQF7 and AQF8 qualifications. In many cases those qualifications are of far better academic quality and standing than those offered by institutions like Deakin, Griffith and Kaplan. Now we have to do it all again because they don’t fit the extremely narrow FASEA “Approved Product List”.
The number of people affected by this appalling decision is far greater than the number of planners who, rightly, should be required to get a degree level education for the first time.
Tell that to the guy with the Masters of Financial Planning that is too old.
Troy, I’ve already done the hard yards with my CFP study (2014 by the way), it’s supposed to be a Masters equivalent. The hours I put in certainly are (I have a separate Masters btw, so I know what’s involved). Now I’m asked to do more. Why? What does it prove? (Except that our premier professional association is pathetically weak in protecting our interests).
Think about it. The FPA and AFA just keep rolling over. They are incapable of representing FPs. What does that say about our ‘profession’?. One day you will get sick of this ‘rolling over’ too, and you will ask yourself, is it really worth it? I certainly am.
You have got to be kidding! If one cent of FPA members money has been given to academics it should be clawed back immediately, and this program shut down. FASEA’s mandate overreach and FPA’s incompetence has ensured there will be rivers of gold compulsorily flowing from financial planners to academics for the next 6 years. FPA should be allocating every cent in its coffers to reimbursing those people who were conned into purchasing FPA’s worthless CFP training.