Financial planners should be able to access Commonwealth support to achieve the education standards made necessary by the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) regime, according to the Financial Planning Association (FPA).
The FPA has used a pre-Budget submission filed with the Treasury to recommend that the Government review the support that is available to financial planners completing formal education mandated by FASEA and consider providing support through the Commonwealth Supported Places regime.
The submission points out that all financial planners will be required to complete additional formal education to comply with the FASEA regime and the additional costs this will impose on planners as they seek to complete additional study.
“The FPA calls on the Government to ensure that, as it is implementing the new education and training standard, it also makes available support for planners to ensure these costs are manageable for small practices,” it said.
“The Government may wish to consider whether Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs) would be an appropriate mechanism to manage the costs being imposed on financial planners,” the submission said. “CSPs are already available for undergraduate courses, including the approved FASEA courses which will be the most common entry pathway for new financial planners in the future.”
“Many existing advisers often did not have available to them financial planning specific undergraduate courses when they entered the profession. They are now required to complete postgraduate courses as an equivalent. It would be equitable for the same support that is available to undergraduate financial planning students to also be available to postgraduate students.”
Elsewhere in its submission, the FPA has also repeated its long-standing call for the tax deductibility of initial financial advice and for financial planners to have a greater ability to interact with agencies such as Centrelink and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
It has also sought Government backing for the Tax Practitioners Board to allow financial planners to apply for ABNs and TFs on behalf clients wishing to establish self-managed superannuation
