The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has released the pass mark for this year’s May financial adviser exam.
Some 195 candidates sat the exam with a pass mark of 63 per cent, slightly down from 67 per cent in the February exams.
This equated to 122 candidates successfully passing.
ASIC said almost three-quarters (74 per cent) of the candidates in May were sitting the exam for the first time which was significantly higher than in February where 60 per cent were first-time candidates.
The next exam would be held on 10 August and enrolments would open from 3 July-21 July.
To date 20,570 individual candidates had sat the exam and 92 per cent had passed.
Of those who have passed:
• Over 15,810 are recorded as current financial advisers on ASIC’s Financial Adviser Register (FAR);
• Over 2,990 are ceased advisers on the FAR and may be re-authorised in the future; and
• Over 950 passed while completing their professional year of work and training.
Click here to read Money Management’s deep-dive into the pass rate of past exams and how they have changed over the years.
In March, ASIC made its first banning against an adviser for falsifying his exam results. In December 2021, Sydney-based Todd Karamian changed his financial adviser certificate from a fail result to a pass and sent the altered certificate to his licensee, Bluepoint Consulting.
Moreover, ASIC discovered that the adviser provided personal advice to 11 retail clients between 31 December 2021 to 9 September 2022 when he was not authorised to do so.
He was prevented from providing any advice, managing an entity that carries on a financial advice firm or performing any role in a financial advice business.
Laura, can you please do a feature on why so many advisers have failed the exam (since its inception). I did the very first one (and passed). I’m not sure if the question set has evolved since then but it was largely an analysis of ethical biases with some questions testing knowledge of regulatory matters. Have the candidates that have not got through (and I know of advisers that have failed multiple times) failed on their basic understanding of ethical considerations (I appreciate that you’re either ethical or you’re not and passing a course in ethics does not make one ethical in nature) or is it a fundamental ignorance of the regulatory settings, or is it just some people are hopeless in an exam setting and freeze up? ASIC have probably already made up their minds on it but it would be good for the industry to know.
So how many passed the May exam?
So how many passed the May exam?