‘Long road’ for new entrants under FASEA standards
The pathway to becoming a financial adviser will be long and arduous under the new education standards and will see firms struggle to attract younger people into the advice industry, a mid-tier firm fears.
HLB Mann Judd partner Michael Hutton said that he predicts the new education standards for advisers, particularly for new entrants, could make it very difficult to attract younger people to the financial advice industry.
“The pathway to becom[ing] a financial adviser is quite long and arduous once the new rules come in,” Mr Hutton said at a recent HLB Mann Judd event in Sydney.
“For the younger advisers coming through, it’s becoming a very long road. I think the university course restrictions are going to be too tight.”
HLB Mann Judd partner Jonathan Philpot agreed that the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority could have made the pathways more flexible for new entrants so that those with related degrees only had to study a few extra subjects rather than a whole degree specifically on wealth management.
“They could have made it more open so that if you do a commerce degree, you can just choose a couple of wealth management subjects and then start to specialise from there,” Mr Philpot said.
“They’re basically saying that you got to have a wealth management degree, which means that from school you need to decide that you want to become a financial adviser. Not many kids are going to decide that, particularly in our current environment.”
Miranda Brownlee
Miranda Brownlee is the deputy editor of SMSF Adviser, which is the leading source of news, strategy and educational content for professionals working in the SMSF sector.
Since joining the team in 2014, Miranda has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest superannuation stories in Australia, and has reported extensively on technical strategy and legislative updates.
Miranda also has broad business and financial services reporting experience, having written for titles including Investor Daily, ifa and Accountants Daily.
