While some questions remain unanswered on the final exam to be imposed on planners through the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority’s (FASEA’s) reforms, the Authority has confirmed that it will require one exam for all advisers regardless of specialisation.
“The exam is targeted at a level that we expect all planners to be able to do, and specialisation exists over and above that,” FASEA chief executive, Stephen Glenfield, told the Financial Planning Association (FPA) Professionals Congress.
As FPA chief executive, Dante De Gori, sought to provide clarity on the recently-released exam draft instrument for members, Glenfield was open about the fact that many other details of the exam were yet to be finalised.
He said the Authority hadn’t settled on a position on the amount of resits available to those failing the exam but confirmed that failing planners could sit a reasonable number of resits.
Glenfield also said that FASEA was working with the exam provider to try and work out an exam structure that would enable planners to only have to resit whichever of the three modules they failed on the exam.
Planners would not be able to sit the exam remotely initially, but Glenfield again promised that FASEA was working out how that could be remedied going forward. Similarly, the Authority was still looking into how the exam would be paid for.
Finally, Glenfield promised that more detail would come on special needs considerations for the exam in the final instrument.
