Speaking at the Sydney leg of the AFA Connect Tour, AFA general manager of policy and professionalism Phil Anderson said the professional body had spent a lot of time on its consultation responses.
In providing its own recommendations and highlighting issues and consequences, he noted some of the AFA’s submissions stretch over 30 pages.
“It is incredibly disheartening when you do all that work and you see such little return,” Mr Anderson said.
FASEA closed its consultation process around relevant degree standards on 14 December, receiving 92 submissions. The policy was finalised within five working days on 27 December.
Commenting on the process, Mr Anderson said FASEA made just two changes.
“I’ll just give you an insight into one of changes. There’s a list of relevant fields of study. You know what they added? Financial planning. For the financial advice and planning profession, they added that subject area. That was not a big change,” Mr Anderson said.
“The second change that they made, which is heading in the right direction, is recognising people who have between four and seven relevant subjects to give them two credits rather than one.”
In January, FASEA finalised its educational pathways policy, including a defined recognition of prior learning framework for existing advisers.
Under the policy, the maximum requirement for a new entrant will be an approved bachelor degree of 24 subjects and for an existing adviser will be a graduate diploma of eight subjects.
The minimum requirements for a new entrant will be an approved graduate diploma of eight subjects. For an existing adviser, it will be one subject being FASEA’s bridging course – the FASEA Code of Ethics and Code Monitoring Bodies.
Let the blame begin.
Given the bodies that made submissions are groups like the FPA and AFA. It’s really like the Tobacco industry wondering why the Government banned advertising. It’s like a Drug company making a submission to ban some pill.
Here we have so called “professional” bodies and many many planners wondering why ASIC. Treasury, FASEA won’t listen to their voices. I would suggest you check out the Professional Partner Program with the FPA and just look at the funding/relationship they get from banks and other product manufacturers that appear before the Royal Commission. Then also consider Dante De Gori’s appearance. In professions like lawyers and Medicine they call that relationship a CONFLICT OF INTEREST. Doctors, the AMA, lawyers learned long ago that you won’t be heard if that’s the relationship.
This industry is DOOMED if we continue on this way and learn nothing from FoFA, LIF, FASEA.
There are some things we can control and we’ll never be taken seriously when these bodies are claiming they represent financial planners and yet getting a nice little kicker from product providers.
spot on. yet advisers turn a blind eye to this and STILL remain a member of the FPA. for god sake, why, they don’t represent us, every opportunity they have to do so, they throw us under the bus.
why would you be a member
Speaking of ethics, one of those on the board, who used to have a business, didn’t pay their staff wages (and never did and absconded any responsibility). How’s that for ethics and a juicy story? Scratch the surface my friends…
Male or female?
I have tried to contact my local member regarding Fasea, and no response…which equals no vote from me.
Keep going. I have found a number of politicians to be quite interested, from both side of politics. They need to hear from us. The more they hear the more interested they will be.
FASAE sponsored by the Banks
I am trying to understand why an existing adviser is required to have a higher education level of AFQ8 over a new entrant AFQ7? Did i miss something?
Yes, in this case the AQF8 Grad Dip is much shorter than a full AQF7 degree new entrants have to do.
You could just do the relevant AQF7 degree if you want but it would take longer… New entrant cant get away with just a Grad Diploma.
Here’s a fun story for anyone who doesn’t have one of their own..
In light of the never-ending media drive to improve my personal ethics, I succumbed to the pressure and enrolled in the Macquarie University Ethics course late last year. I’ve always enjoyed philosophy, and wanted to test myself. I also wanted to see if my interpretation of our industry pressures had any merit.
Anyway, I completed the course. The material was in-depth and the assignments were stimulating.
Upon receiving my results, I submitted them to our compliance person with the thought that there might be some CPD points in there.
Turns out that there were not. The course was not “approved”, so there wass no credit for the hours and late nights and weekends I had spent on this ethics course. I was told I should have checked before doing the course. I replied that my focus was on ethics, and not on CPD points. I wasn’t overly worried but I was substantially bemused that an ethics course from a major university was not sufficient authority to obtain any CPD points on ethics…
Does anyone else see the irony there?
Anyway, I received a call from compliance earlier this year. Apparently the rules had changed, and the course was now approved. Yay!
Except the approval only applied from the 1st January 2019.
I would suggest that FASEA has a faulted definition of ethics. I would suggest that the FASEA management have failed to implement a prudent and responsible transition program for a structural change to a major sector of the Australian economy. I would suggest that this has been done in the open and under the full spotlight of public scrutiny. Much like the CPA debacle, those responsible will retire or move on to bigger and better things, while those who are impacted will be left to tidy up the mess.
For fans of Nietzsche…
“Human, all too human.”
Will your Macquarie University ethics course give you exemption from the FASEA Ethics Bridging course? My guess is no. FASEA will claim that it isn’t relevant because it didn’t cover the specific FASEA Code of Ethics. Just as they are not giving any credit to those who studied the CFP Ethics module.
FASEA is effectively saying that people who have studied ethical principles are incapable of applying them to new and changing codes. The only thing that matters is tick the box compliance with their specific code. In a couple of years they’ll change their code slightly, and force everyone to pay for yet another course. FASEA is the gift that keeps on giving for the conflicted and unethical course providers who have wangled their way onto the Board.
This will be my third ethics course, once in my bachelor and again in CFP. I mean how many ethical theories does one have to study to prove they know right from wrong. Ethics is a rubbish waste of time excuse for a subject. It’s back and white, you’re ethical or your not. You can’t be trained.
The fact is…we won’t see any reasonable, common sense buy-in from FASEA either!
It’s taken me a long time to understand this but common sense and what’s right and wrong have nothing to do with how FASEA, the (current) Government and ASIC approach all this. It’s all about power and filthy, rotten greed that’s all driven by the banks and people in politics who’ll do anything to get to the top!
It’s an utter disgrace.
There is so much business out there for everyone in this industry to earn an honest income yet the banks feel they have to squeeze all the independent advisers out (and yes ASIC, I said independent) so they can line their filthy pockets with obscene profits via their low quality and expensive direct and Robo advice products in the future.
Advisers represent everything they aren’t so they have to get rid of us. Pure and simple.
The AFA have wasted their money, time and effort because FASEA were never going to listen…the agenda had already been set along with the outcome years back and all those concerned, should hang their heads in shame.
It’s almost as if the AFA has absolutely no sway with the industry
…only “almost as if”? They have no sway….
This process is not about creating a profession – its more about destroying the business model.
From a training and education perspective ( having spent 20+ years in a professional capacity in that field) it fails every requirement for probity, justification and evidenced-based learning – to suggest that its a “good idea” is tenuous at best. The previous reviews into the industry found there has been a failure of technical competence – idealogical differences – but never technical competence moreover it has been a failure of character. It would be naive to think that something that has started from a flawed base will do anything other than to force an agenda on people. This is an EQ business – not an IQ business. Even more so with the political masters moving the goal posts every election cycle and budget night. If we have so-called professionals driving this evolution then they will be doing the bidding of a master that has no skin in the game. Identity politics at its zenith. On the up side it will keep every one pointlessly busy when they are needing advice to retire – just stay in the industry fund then.
well said.. although our industry as a whole is also to blame. We have rolled over like an obedient dog to scared to speak up. That is why we have been hijacked by stupid people with an ideological agenda and where they really do not understand the industry we work in. It is when the average person won’t be able to get personal advice as costs are excessive, and the average person becomes a burden on the tax payer that they might actually wake and realise that their agenda is completely flawed.
While i agree with the increased education standards FASEA has been a complete farce. The whole thing has been hijacked by Universities who see nothing but dollar signs.
It’s not just universities who have hijacked well intentioned legislation for their own commercial gain. The so called “Ethics Centre” is also in on the scam. It should be prosecuted by the ACCC for deceptive labelling.
Interestingly, the ” Ethics business ” is now booming.
It has been if not a necessary topic to have received so much focus but it has also been a very smart focus from the ethics business to create a constant need for their services.
This is not to say that a close monitoring and assessment of ethics on a continuing basis is absolutely necessary, but I would ask this question of Dr.Simon Longstaff.
Is it indeed ethical for institutions such as ASIC and the Govt (either Liberal or Labor) to knowingly impose legislative change that will in fact be destructive to an industry and cause financial pain when the basis for recommending change has no identifiable benefit in regard to outcomes ?
I would say that implementing or forcing change for the sake of change and for the pursuit of your own political standing without an identified and measured beneficial outcome must be labelled as a conflict of interest and therefore unethical.
yep.. but they haven’t understood that most planners are throwing their hands up in the air and will leave the industry. They may not end up with the cash cow after all!!!!!
Join the club… your members have felt this way for the last 12mths
you are still a member?. that’s funny.