Continuing education requirements from the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) will make it difficult for women who want to stay in the industry while starting a family, according to Synchron.
Speaking at the House of Representatives Standing Committee for Economics, Synchron independent chair, Michael Harrison, said continuing education and professional development requirements would make it difficult for women to stay up-to-date if they had taken time out of the industry.
“A lady usually will at some point in time look to get married and have children but to stay in the industry she needs to maintain her continuing education,” Harrison said.
“She needs to stay current with everything that is going on. Just looking at the situation at Synchron, every four months we run a professional development day that runs a full day to bring people up to date.
“We also run a fortnightly Zoom catch-up, which includes a compliance section, so they know what’s going on – it’s very hard for a woman staying home who is raising kids to stay current with all these things.”
Harrison said Synchron had a “reasonable” percentage of women who were advisers and at one point almost 40% of its Queensland advisers were women.
“That might have dropped off a bit since the FASEA recommendations,” Harrison said.
“Personally, I’d like to see more women [in the industry] because I find they have more empathy, and especially because we have more and more single females, for whatever reason, who are in that 50-plus section looking to retirement.”
