AMP planners to sit annual exams
AMP Financial Planning (AMPFP), as of next year, will demand its more than 1,000 authorised representatives sit an annual exam before they can continue practicing under the banner of Australia’s largest dealer group.
As part of an annual practicing accreditation program, planners will be tested on areas such as their technical skills in wealth creation, preservation and utilization as well as their portfolio construction, customer service and strategic planning abilities the group revealed today.
AMPFP managing director Greg Kirk says the accreditation program has been introduced to raise the standards of the group and build consumer confidence.
“The annual practicing accreditation will lift our minimum standards beyond those required by legislation,” he says.
The exam will not be marked in a pass/fail format with a spokesperson for AMP saying results will only be used to assess whether follow up training will be required for particular planners.
“This is a tool for collecting information on what they [planners] do and don’t know which will be filtered into training and professional development,” the spokesperson says.
Meanwhile Kirk says the test, which is made up of eight accreditation modules consisting of multiple choice, short-answer questions and case studies, should only take planners about six hours to get through.
The Securities Institute of Australia and DeakinPrime will assess responses independently for AMPFP.
“It [the program] allows us to identify the individual strengths, areas of interest and development areas for each of our planners, and to tailor our support so that it fits best with their growth plans.
“It may also open opportunities for planners to have more flexibility in the markets in which they now operate and allow them to either specialize or even broaden their advice and product offerings,” Kirk says.
He says exam results will be stored on a database which may be used, for example, to determine which planners may be more compatible to work in the same practice.
He says feedback from planners so far has been positive.
“Rather than complaining, planners are asking how do we it to get the best out of this,” he says.
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