FASEA urged to align adviser CPD with TPB
The Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) needs to ensure that the continuing professional development (CPD) regime it imposes on financial advisers aligns with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) regime, according to the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA).
In a submission responding to FASEA’s proposed approach to continuing professional development, the AFA has warned against imposing an unnecessarily stringent regime on financial advisers, arguing that the FASEA standard needs to give due consideration to the requirements that exist in other similar professions.
“It is our view that a total of 50 hours exceeds the requirements of similar professions and the allocation of time to individual categories of CPD requires some refinement,” the AFA said.
The submission said the AFA was very conscious of the additional cost of CPD that would come from increasing the current benchmark of 30 hours to 50 hours.
“CPD activity costs money to attend and it also costs money in terms of time out of the office and away from clients,” it said. “In the context of a range of other cost increases impacting the sector at present, we think that this is an important factor that should be taken into consideration.”
The submission argued that financial advisers would need to comply with both the FASEA CPD standard and also the Tax Practitioners Board’s (TPB) CPE standard.
“The TPB effectively requires tax (financial) advisers to do 20 hours per year, although it is assessed over a three-year period,” it said. “Under the TPB CPE Guidance, it is possible for CPD to count towards the AFSL requirements and also the TPB requirement, where it incorporates a tax element.”
“It is important that the FASEA standard takes into account the requirements of the TPB and that the FASEA approach facilitates CPD activity that will count towards both the FASEA target and the TPB target,” the AFA said. “Otherwise the TPB requirements end out being in addition to the FASEA requirements, which would make the overall hours target even more extreme.”
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