Count rejoins FPA after five year absence
Count Wealth Accountantshas rejoined theFinancial Planning Association(FPA) as a principal member after having withdrawn its membership five years ago.
The FPA made the announcement this morning in Sydney when it stated it had admitted two new principal dealer members to the association.
The group withdrew its membership at the start of 1998 after a long wrangle between the two in which Count refused to enforce the FPA’s Diploma of Financial Planning (DFP) standards for the dealer group’s members.
As a result the FPA called a meeting of its disciplinary committee and found that Count did not comply with its minimum standards.
At the time, managing director Barry Lambert stated the Count group was “a national dealer group of accountants and we aim to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the financial planners for clear business reasons.”
He also vowed the group would not return to the FPA and was glad to be gone “as it offered little value”.
In March of this year Lambert indicated that Count would rejoin the FPA if it made changes that recognised Certified Practising Accountant (CPA) qualifications.
In February the FPA said it would allow professionals with differing education and industry backgrounds to enter the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) program.
Late last month the FPA released details of the move with the offer of a “challenge status” pathway to allied professionals with CPA, Chartered Accountant (CA), Practising National Accountant, and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designations and to professionals with recognised postgraduate qualifications.
The new pathway will assess the ability to apply financial planning knowledge to real-life financial planning situations and will be available from the second semester of this year.
To qualify applicants will need to prove they have two years of approved practitioner experience and hold authorised representative status with an Australian Financial Services Licensee at the time of application.
The move does not affect Count’s stablemateCompound Investmentswhich has maintained its membership with the FPA since inception in the late ‘90s.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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