The first session of the ethics training course, which has been designed to help advisers understand and apply the FASEA requirements, had almost 500 advisers in attendance.
TAL head of licensees and partnerships Beau Riley said the course had been developed to help advisers fulfil their educational requirements set by FASEA and prepare them for the FASEA examination.
“From 1 January 2020, financial advisers must comply with a code of ethics and be covered by a scheme under which their compliance with the code of ethics will be monitored and enforced,” said Mr Riley.
“Additionally, financial advisers must obtain nine continuous professional development (CPD) hours in ‘Professionalism and Ethics’ and pass a FASEA examination, which consists of a section on ‘Applied Ethical and Professional Reasoning’.”
The course was part of TAL’s commitment to supporting a well-informed industry, said Mr Riley, as currently there was a lot of confusion surrounding the requirements.
“Currently, there are very few resources available to support financial advisers in understanding the code of ethics and how it applies to their day-to-day business dealings and customer interactions,” he said.
Advisers needed to know how FASEA would affect them as it would allow them to deliver optimal client outcomes and inspire consumer confidence, said Mr Riley.
“Through our TAL Risk Academy ethics course, we want to equip advisers with a solid understanding of the scope of the code of ethics and the procedures they need to put in place to ensure they adhere to the code and demonstrate their adherence to others,” he said.
The course is run by TAL national technical manager David Glen and it is available on-demand and free to attend.
How about Brett Clark doing an ethics course. Bought Asteron for 725M in August last year. Said he was committed to running Asteron and TAL side by side and was so impressed with the Asteron history and strong IFA relationships. Skip 8 months and in April 19 has now decided Asteron business is unsustainable and will be shut down. Only two options he lied or mislead the market or TAL were negligent in their due diligence of a 725M purchase. What do you think happened?
Ethics? What a joke!
Over the last few weeks I’ve had emails from TAL offering ways of discounting customers for new business but also how they are going to hit existing customers with a 12% increase in premiums including increasing level premiums. TAL should really think about some training in Ethics!