FASEA tells unis: don’t rely on our financial adviser courses list

The Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority is under pressure to decide on the courses that will be recognised.

Financial planning courses are under scrutiny

The official body whose job is to approve university courses to train financial planners has admitted that education providers cannot rely on the list of approved courses on its website.

The Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority, set up last year, is under pressure from universities and other higher education institutions to decide on the list of courses that will be recognised as formal qualifications for financial advisers.

By the beginning of 2024, financial advisers will be required to have formal higher education qualifications — which is one of the key regulatory changes made by the federal government in response to scandals in the financial advice industry.

In response, FASEA has published a list of courses on its website titled “FASEA approved programs & providers”.

But the list, while apparently endorsed by FASEA, was not actually drawn up by the authority. Most of it is cut-and-pasted from a list of recommended courses for ­financial advisers produced by the Financial Planning Education Council, a body set up by an industry group, the Financial Planning Association.

Furthermore, FASEA has not fulfilled a requirement of its Act with regard to the approved course list, which is to publish it as a “legislative instrument” requiring scrutiny by parliament.

Asked yesterday if universities could rely on the published course list, FASEA answered: “Technically no, because it has not yet been incorporated into a legislative instrument.”

The authority did not directly answer the question of whether it had independently investigated the degrees listed on its approved course to ensure they met the necessary requirements.

Instead FASEA said it had recently appointed an accreditation manager “to develop its own accreditation process with education providers and will transition the process over from FPEC in coming months”.

“Over this period the standards authority will consult regularly with education providers to ensure they are clear on any changes required to their internal processes to gain accreditation,” it said in a written answer to questions.

FASEA defended its adoption of the FPEC approved degree list saying it was “ an interim measure while the standards authority developed its own accreditation process for courses”.

It said that this was “to provide certainty for students enrolled or planning to enrol in financial planning courses, to ensure they were not delayed in being able to enter the industry”.

FASEA defended the outsourcing of its work to FPEC, saying that the education council was “run independently of the Financial Planning Association”.

However the members of FPEC — which includes academics, financial planners and FPA chief executive Dante De Gori — are appointed by the FPA board.

Universities and other higher education providers want solid advice on which courses will be approved for financial planning qualifications, because students need to start studying as soon as possible in order to graduate by the 2024 deadline.

People currently working as ­financial advisers who want to study part-time for their qualifying degree are likely to take six years to complete a bachelor ­degree.

Even if they were to start now, they would not complete their course by the beginning of 2024.