Three decades and a Masters degree, but no exam pass
Despite three decades of experience in the industry and a Masters degree approved by the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA), Leigh Anoos couldn’t pass the FASEA exam.
Anoos is a licensed financial planning and managing director at Easy Monitor, a software company that specialises in compliance management for financial services.
She sat the exam in Melbourne on 5 December, 2019, and was one of the 14% that failed.
An industry veteran that had worked for 33 years, she had received her Masters in Financial Planning from the University of Sunshine Coast in May, 2007 – one of FASEA’s many approved previously provided courses.
“I don’t feel I have failed, I feel the system has failed… I’m not ashamed and many advisers have been beaten into submission, feeling ashamed and not wanting to declare it,” Anoos said.
“I’m getting messages from third parties that are too scared to tell anybody they’ve sat the exam, let alone failed it.”
For exam preparation, she had participated in training groups organised by her dealer group, as well as TAL’s Risk Academy online.
“Getting into the exam, it was like being led around like grade one children, we had to stand in lines and weren’t allowed to do anything until we were told.
“We were shuffled into a room, we weren’t allowed to choose desks, I don’t know why, it was all about power and control.”
Anoos said her biggest complaints were a lack of transparency from FASEA and that it would be better if there was a precursor course.
“I won’t re-sit, only because I have no idea what else I could have done to prepare better,” Anoos said.
“I studied hard for that, I attended everything that was available to me that I could get my hands on prior to the exam, so what would be the point?
“Why would I re-sit knowing quite well that during the exam it was not about the things I studied?”
She took issue with the ambiguity of the questions and said in real life advisers would be able to ask further questions to clients to clarify.
In correspondence from the financial adviser exam team at the Australia Council for Education Research (ACER), who had been contracted by FASEA to develop and administer the exam, they told her ‘international research-based methods for the analysis and standard-setting process have been used to determine the pass mark’ for the exam.
“This approach is quite different from how universities and/or higher education providers might determine a ‘pass mark’, for example, by providing a percentage correct, or using a bell-curve distribution,” it said.
She was told if she were to re-sit the exam, she would need to revise in three areas: financial advice regulatory and legal requirements, financial advice construction, and applied ethical and professional reasoning and communication.
If she wanted a re-mark of her written responses, it would cost $198.
“The option exists for a re-mark of your written responses from the recent financial adviser exam,” ACER said.
“Please be reminded that each written response has already been marked by two independent approved expert markers and then reviewed and adjudicated by the expert chief marker.”
“All re-marking will be double-marked and conducted independently, with previously assigned scores unseen by markers.”
Recommended for you
After years of low rates, three younger fixed income specialists have shared how they navigated “one of the toughest environments for investment decision-making” in the form of their first interest rate hiking cycle.
The global nature and geopolitical threats involved in investing in emerging markets can mean the job of an emerging market manager entails additional challenges than its developed markets counterpart.
Australian financial advice firms are increasingly looking towards outsourcing as a tool to optimise their business, two industry professionals share, freeing advisers to focus more on client-facing duties.
Retaining new entrants in the advice industry as they complete their Professional Year is a key focus for advice firms in 2024, with younger generations increasingly valuing workplace culture more than ever.
