Only 28 unsuccessful candidates in the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) exam have seen their result change from a fail to a pass – only 8.4%.
Answering a question on notice to the Senate Economics Committee, FASEA said there had been 333 unsuccessful candidates who requested a remark.
“These candidates were borderline fails in the original round of marking who on average mark [is] changed by one,” FASEA said.
As of the May 2021 exam, there were 4,449 advisers on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Financial Advisers Register (FAR) that had not yet attempted the exam.
There were 1,510 of the 14,854 advisers who had passed the exam that were recorded as ceased on the FAR.
The highest number of exam attempts was five which had been attempted eight times with only four of those passed.
“The relevant providers exam is a high stakes exam, the average number of attempts needed by a candidate to pass was 1.08,” FASEA said.
“This illustrates that the vast majority of candidates who pass the exam do so on their first attempt, but that a smaller proportion do require additional attempts to pass.
“The cost of each exam is $540 (ex. GST). To date, the maximum number of attempts eight candidates have had is five, at a total cost of $2700 (ex. GST).
“FASEA provides resources to assist adviser in preparing for the exam at no cost, this includes the FG003 Exam Preparation Guide, FG004 Exam Practice Questions including over 100 question some of which are retired Exam questions and Exam webinars pre and post exam sittings for all sittings in 2021.”
