Prof McMaster dons mortarboard

Former FPA chairman Wes McMaster has become the first financial planner in Australia to be anointed a professor.

McMaster has taken on the role of adjunct professor of financial planning at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's school of economics.

His role at the university is "to help bridge the gap between delivering academic theory and the practical side of the financial planning business", McMaster says.

"It will also involve assisting RMIT to expand its financial planning course into Asia," he says.

RMIT already provides courses for budding Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) in Singapore and is looking to expand further in Asia and potentially in Europe. RMIT was also the first university in Australia to offer a degree course in financial planning, starting up the stream in 1996. At least six other universities have since jumped on the bandwagon.

Following his departure from Mercantile Mutual, where he headed up the Bleakleys and Advisor Investment Services dealer groups, McMaster has been consulting with a number of companies in Asia. His work with the international CFP Board has also equipped him with high level contacts within the financial planning community in Asia.

AXA Australia course director of financial planning at RMIT, Warren McKeown, says McMaster's appointment is an important step on the path to financial planning being recognised as a profession.

"When you look at the road travelled by the accounting and nursing professions, it was not until the appearance of university courses in those professions that the outside world recognised them as professions," he says.

"And until the outside world recognises financial planning as a profession, it can not talk about itself as one."

McKeown says McMaster has been a high profile advocate of professionalism in financial planning throughout his time on the FPA and CFP boards.