The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) is opposing the Government’s ‘clean record’ requirement under its proposed experience pathway as there would be too many unknowns with how it could be handled.
As it stood, potential applicants could be exempt if they had sanctions from the Financial Services and Credit Panel (FSCP), excluding warnings.
Speaking to members, AFA chief executive, Phil Anderson, said: “We’re not opposed to higher professional standards, and I know it might sound counterintuitive to oppose that clean record requirement.
“But at this stage, we don’t know how many sanctions will be handed out by the FSCP or for what reasons.
“Is it going to be a relatively minor matter that ends up in front of the panel? Maybe it relates to a complaint where the complainant has a different version of events to what the advisers perception is?
“We just think that’s a little bit of an unknown and also we’re really conscious that if you get a sanction in 2022, then you’ve got at least three years to respond to it but if you’ve got a sanction against your name, at the end of 2025, you’ve run out of time to undertake the qualification pathway.”
The Government’s proposed experience pathway would also mean those who had worked four days a week for the last 12 years and those who had gone on maternity leave would not qualify.
“We certainly don’t want to see mothers who have taken time off from maternity leave and return to work part time to be disadvantaged,” Anderson said.
He said another problem with the proposal was it needed to make it easier for businesses to appoint Professional Year (PY) candidates as the association was concerned about “the low flow of new advisers into the profession”.
“That’s going to be key to the future – we’re not getting enough new advisers in, we’ve got to get more who come in, they’ve got to want to do advice, they’ve got to work their way through the university program and then there has got to be opportunities for them one they are finished.
“Maybe we need to have some sort of apprenticeship model where the government contributes to the funding of those new entrants.”
