Education has shifted from being a point of compliance to a point of value proposition for financial advice firms, according to knowIT and the Monarch Institute.
knowIT, a financial planning strategy firm, and education provider Monarch Institute told a media briefing on Tuesday that there had been a shift in conversations among advice firms since three to four years ago from ensuring they were compliant to now enhancing their value proposition.
Monarch’s chief operating officer, Nick Chapman, said his firm was looking at how to structure good education content so that it could reinforce an entire business’ core value proposition.
“The value proposition will be what it means to be an adviser, a paraplanner, and what it means to be a person in the organisation. Then, their whole value proposition is that they are experts in their field,” Chapman said.
knowIT chief executive, Wayne Wilson, said there had been a relatively strong swing away from practices wanting to be within aligned dealer groups to moving to independent Australian financial services licences (AFSLs).
“In that process what we’re seeing is that there is a rush to quality and content as a separating factor between those small bespoke independent practices and have that as a value proposition,” he said.
Wilson said the combination of the Government’s decision to raise the professional standards and the shift to being independent would lead to a ramp up in education, knowledge, and technology to help advice firms have a better value proposition than their competitors.
The two firms announced they had entered into a joint venture to provide vocational education and training for knowIT wealthdigital users to study a Diploma of Financial Planning and Advanced Diploma of Financial Planning.
The Monarch training courses would be linked to knowITdigital continuing professional development (CPD) offerings.
Wilson noted that the joint venture was an important element of the compliance portal that wealthdigital was planning to deliver later this year.
“The portal will become an end-to-end compliance and risk management system at the AFSL, practice and planner levels,” he said.
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