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.”
Comments
The people who are passing are those who have studied most recently. There really is no relevancy for a Masters degree obtained in 2007 anymore. Significant changes have occurred since then. The issue is not that the exam is hard, because it is not, it is that people are not prepared to update their knowledge and assume that the way that they have done things, and their existing knowledge is up to date. It quite often is not. New entrants to the industry will have much less trouble passing the exam as their study is recent. I have been in the industry over 25 years, but have studied significantly recently, I passed the exam first go. We need to change our mindset - long term service/experience does not necessarily mean you have the technical/legislative knowledge required. Time to study - we were warned and were given time.
precisely. knowledge gets outdated, very quickly. you and I have to continually learn. gone are the days you could do 1 degree and then not study again. in the future, financial planners will have 4 to 5 degrees, possibly more, I am already seeing this trend take shape.
professionals will have to get used to the idea of studying forever. the education industry will innovate and deliver micro-courses which can be done progressively over time in bite-size pieces which can be articulated to degrees.
do we really want to be like lawyers who do a measly bachelor's degree and 10 hours of CPD in NSW.
I would rather poke myself in the eye with a needle than to be as low as a lawyer. nothing is lower than these vermin scum.
Interesting that someone who completed a "Masters in Financial Planning" from the "University of Sunshine Coast" in 2007 was given FASEA study exemptions but couldn't pass the exam.
Yet advisers with general business & science based degrees from high quality institutions receive minimal credit from FASEA, but have no trouble passing the exam.
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