Financial advisers who live at least 150 kilometres from All Financial Adviser Exam centres will be able to sit the exam under live supervision using their own computers, the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) has announced.
The remote proctoring solution will be available from the February exam, during 13 to 18 February. Remote proctoring information can be found on the FASEA website, including which postcodes are deemed ineligible.
The February exam locations will include metropolitan locations along with Gold Coast, Wollongong, Cairns, Ballarat, Launceston, Port Macquarie, Traralgon, Tamworth, Townsville and Newcastle.
Registrations for the February exam are open and will close on 24 January, 2020. Over 1,700 advisers have already registered for the February exam, according to FASEA.
FASEA also announced that its 2 to 7 April exam would be held across 18 centres and included Townsville, Gosford, Sunshine Coast, Geelong, Toowoomba, Bunbury, Mackay, Geraldton, Wagga Wagga, Coffs Harbour, along with metropolitan areas.
Registrations would close on 13 March, 2020 and 140 advisers had so far been registered.
For the 11 to 16 June exam, advisers would be able to sit the exam in metropolitan locations along with Townsville, Gold Coast, Newcastle, Wollongong, Cairns, Bendigo, Albury/Wodonga, Rockhampton, Port Macquarie and Orange. The authority said registration would close 22 May, 2020.
FASEA noted that 2,981 advisers sat the December 2019 exam and that results would be release by the end of January.
Comments
Wow, what a disaster. These numbers suggest a massive exodus is underway. 20% have already walked, but given less than 1/3 have attempted or registered for the exam in the first 5 sittings, I would say we are on track for a 60-70% wipe-out. On top of that, there will be support staff losing their jobs and millions of clients will lose their trusted adviser, so they will be feeling very uneasy and they will spend less. This will have a significant and measurable impact on the Australian economy. No doubt about it. When will the Coalition wake up and realise the FASEA experiment has failed miserably.
you are spot on. i have been saying there will be 5,000 advisers remaining post 2024, who are too vested to leave. early numbers are definitely indicating it will be a mass exodus.
get this, according to the adviser ratings latest report, of the 4,000 advisers who have exited, already had a fasea approved degree.
even mainstream media are now commenting on it " the national scandal that is financial planning" (see afr https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/the-national-scandal-th...)
it's not just fasea, but fasea is the straw that broke the camel's back.
In Dec 2019, FASEA confirmed that insurance commissions were a a valid form of remuneration and explicitly allowed by law ( Yes, that is correct FASEA !)
However, they also cover this statement by then including the statement that the remuneration is "fair and reasonable" and represents value for the client.
The AFA CEO, Phil Kewin has also challenged FASEA to quantify how this will be assessed on a case by case basis.
The reason for challenging this is simple.
Firstly, the commission payment to the adviser is valid and allowed by law.
All Life Insurance companies are now governed by exactly the same level of upfront commission structure being currently only 60%.
It is well known that larger risk insurance cases and consequently higher premium cases often take a significant time to complete and are often complex in the advice process.
However, if a client requests a large level of cover for a specific purpose and the premium amount is significant, the adviser will obviously receive a higher level of commission payment even if the placement of that cover was efficient and timely.
If an insurance case was to result in an annual premium of $50,000, the adviser would receive $30,000 in commission remuneration based on the 60% model.
The anomaly in FASEA's statements is " fair and reasonable and represents value" especially if the placement of one case was rapid and did not require extensive advice and negotiation and the other was very complex, required significant and detailed advice strategies and took an extensive time frame to complete.
So, the question that FASEA must clarify is which one of these examples will or will have the potential to breach the Code of Ethics Standard 3 ???
If the client's needs are analysed and satisfied and the advice is in the client's best interest, does a case that provides a high level commission remuneration to the adviser at risk of being seen as UNFAIR and UNREASONABLE , even though the mandated LIF commission model is consistent across all companies and FASEA confirms the commission remuneration is acceptable by law and valid ?
All FASEA has really done here is to simply regurgitate what is already known in that Life Insurance commissions are in fact valid and lawful, but have retained the grey area of the unknown in how their own Code of Ethics would assess the application of same.
What FASEA should clarify is whether an adviser received a commission payment of $50,000 or $5000 for Life Insurance advice that satisfied all other advice criteria and best interest, whether FASEA's Code of Ethics Standard 3 would be problematic for an adviser if the higher commission payment were deemed unreasonable.
If you are a Real Estate Agent with a listing for a $5Mill property and it sells in 7 days and another listing for a $500k property that takes 6 months to sell is the commission payment on the $5Mill property deemed unfair and unreasonable even if the client achieved a rapid sale and the top price for their property ?
Well said Agent 86!
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