The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has released the results of the 20th Financial Advisers Exam cycle, which was conducted in February 2023 and administered by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).
Out of 192 candidates who sat for the February exam, 67 per cent (128 candidates) passed, and 60 per cent of those candidates were taking the exam for the first time.
To date, the exam has been taken by 20,425 individual candidates, with over 18,890 (93 per cent) passing the test, demonstrating their ability to apply their knowledge of advice construction, ethics, and legal requirements to the practical scenarios assessed in the exam, ASIC said.
Moreover, the regulator revealed that those who passed the exam include over 15,850 current financial advisers on ASIC’s Financial Adviser Register (FAR), representing 99 per cent of current advisers on the FAR; over 2,840 ceased advisers on the FAR, who may be re-authorised in the future, and over 890 who passed while completing their professional year of work and training.
ASIC informed that the next exam sitting will be held on 11 May 2023, with enrolments set to open on 3 April and close on 21 April.
this exam does not measure ” passing the test, demonstrating their ability to apply their knowledge of advice construction, ethics, and legal requirements to the practical scenarios assessed in the exam, ” in any sense of the word.
Passing the test in the words of the lead facilitator “demonstrates you can answer an imaginary scenario – without any reference to real life” – to the satisfaction of the same misinformed people that constructed the exam. with still over a 30% failure rate after 4 years – something is desperately wrong with either – the teaching format, the exam questions as they relate to the subject matter – or the whole construct. (whatever you do – do not interpret the question from a base of experience and be careful with littoral interpretations)
33% failure rate? This is much higher than the early days of the FASEA exam, when most practising advisers were passing it first go. Makes you wonder about the standard of the prescribed FASEA degrees new entrants now need, compared to the pre FASEA qualifications existing advisers had, which FASEA deemed worthless.
Good quality degrees in engineering, sciences, humanities and medical fields equipped many pre FASEA advisers with the intellectual skills to learn rapidly changing content and correctly apply it in a variety of different situations. It made them ideally suited as advisers, and quite capable of passing the FASEA exam.
I truly didn’t realise the exam was still able to be sat by AR’s