I can understand the frustrations, particularly from advisers who've spent so much time and money obtaining the qualifications that were waved as a giant stick over their heads, with the threat of having to give up their career and business if they didn't do it.

But I can't sympathise too much with education providers. Most of them didn't bother to create the current AQF level courses for financial advice before they were mandated by government. New advisers will continue to need their services in order to enter the industry. Advisers wanting to further their knowledge and those with under 10 years experience can still do the courses.

For advisers with over a decade of experience, the qualifications hold less value - of the units I've completed so far I've found very little value. I feel like I'm paying thousands of dollars and taking many hours from my clients, business, staff and family to tick a box for the sake of ticking a box.

This brings me to my other point: in addition to the obvious costs to advisers of time and money, many of these financial advisers are self employed. The reality is managing and growing a business that supports the incomes of staff becomes far more difficult when study is added. Education providers can be upset about losing a source of revenue from the backlog of advisers needing to meet education requirements, that's fine, but what about the families and (typically) small businesses having to foot the bill? I'd argue that they have been impacted significantly more when compared with education providers.