The Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) has cleared the way for financial advisers to register to sit the FASEA exam.
The authority has announced that both new entrants and existing advisers will have until 31 May to notify their intention with FASEA chief executive, Stephen Glenfield describing it as a significant milestone and urging advisers to register as early as possible.
Along with the announcement, the FASEA released a curriculum, reading list and practice questions, with the practice questions presenting advisers problem of finding answers to a range of scenarios.
The FASEA announcement said it would be available to new entrants and existing advisers between 20 June and 24 June and would be held across nine locations – Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Townsville, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Hobart.,
It said subsequent exam sittings this year would be in September and December, with further exam sittings in February, April, June, August, October and December, next year.
The exam is a key requirement of legislative reforms introduced in 2017 to raise the education, training and ethical standards of financial advisers. Existing advisers are required to pass the exam by 1 January 2021. New entrants are required to pass the exam before they commence Quarter 3 of their Professional Year.
The exam will test the practical application of knowledge in the following competency areas:
- Financial Advice Regulatory and Legal requirements (including Corporations Act, Chapter7, AML, Privacy and Tax Agents Services Act (TASA)2009)
- Financial Advice Construction – suitability of advice aligned to different consumer groups, incorporating consumer behaviour and decision making
- Applied ethical and professional reasoning and communication – incorporating FASEA Code of Ethics and Code Monitoring Bodies.
Comments
I just wished to clarify the 31st May deadline for resistering intention with FASEA. Which year? Surely it cannot be 2 weeks time.
James - if you want to sit the exam this June then you need to register before the end of May. Ridiculous given they haven't provided the promised learning material or practice questions.
I've talked to a lot of professionals from other industries about this exam and they are dumbfounded when you explain the ridiculous timeframes and other issues surrounding this exam. I mean, our careers rest on passing an exam that has no reference material to allow you to study for it. They are forcing us to pay $540 for the privilege, that's per attempt. The pass mark has been set at 65%....I saw a presentation by a Kaplan exec last week and he was nearly laughing about that, he said the pass mark for all higher education across Australia is 50% but for some reason we need a credit of 65% to pass.
The exam is also completed on a computer, it is not paper based. You think about some of the older Advisers in the industry that can't type fast, think about how much of a disadvantage they are at when it comes to answering short answer questions in an exam situation.
The fact that Advisers who are only authorised to provide advice in insurance products will need to complete an exam that will very likely contain case studies about retirement planning, cash flow management etc.
Also, why do you need to wait 3 months in between attempts? that limits you to 5 or 6 attempts, if they stuff up the exam and make it too hard to begin with then you could easily run out of time.
Just madness.
Actually I stand corrected, they have released sample exam questions - a case study involving Aged Care advice with multiple choice questions that seem to have more than one correct answer, you need to pick the most correct answer.
Maybe there are several answers, because they are not sure which is correct?
Hi Brett, can you send a link for sample exam questions ?
cheers
https://www.fasea.gov.au/advisers-invited-to-register-for-fasea-exam/ half way down this page is the link to suggested reading and practice questions
Absolute madness Brett!! FASEA area law unto themselves.
My local MP - Labour - said that they are working with the FSU to make some major changes to FASEA. Lets see.
The whole concept of government (regardless of who is in power) entering and intervening in areas not qualified to do so, is complete madness in itself. History has proven that this borders on insanity at best!
Hi Brett H , can you send a link to the sample exam questions plz
would be much appreciated.
Cheers
https://www.fasea.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/FA-Exam-Practice-Que...
Its all been uploaded to the FASEA site now, best of luck Andrew!
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