Industry scrutiny has created optimal time to change
The raft of reviews and inquiries into the financial planning sector in 2014 has created the optimal set of circumstances in which to lift professional and educational standards with the Financial Planning Association (FPA) calling on all industry members to back many of the proposed changes.
FPA chief executive, Mark Rantall, said that 2014 had been populated with a number of key events which had created a set of circumstances in which the public, media and Government had all called on the sector to lift standards.
Addressing journalists at a briefing yesterday Rantall stated the ongoing debate over the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) legislation, the Financial System Inquiry, the Senate Inquiries into the performance of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the FOFA Bills and the Scrutiny of Financial Advice and the Parliamentary Joint Commission (PJC) into professional standards and education had brought the sector under immense greatest scrutiny.
However Rantall said these events and their impact in 2015 offered "the biggest opportunity we have got for the industry and profession to finally lift education standards and professional standards of financial planning to appropriate level in this country".
He said transitionary arrangements would be needed, and many of these had already been suggested by the PJC Inquiry, and called upon everyone in the industry to get behind the PJC Inquiry recommendations, which shadowed many aspects of the FPA's own 10 Point Plan.
"Hopefully the whole industry can see way clear to line up behind these important changes and lift once and for all the standards of advice in this country," he said.
"We have been calling for it for many years and many financial planners have voluntarily gone through that process It would be wonderful thing to see the rest of industry follow and lift professional standards right across the board."
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