FASEA reveals exam underperformance areas
The Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) has revealed three key areas advisers have struggled with in the FASEA exam: financial advice regulatory and legal requirements, financial advice construction, and applied ethical and professional reasoning and communication.
In the financial advice regulatory and legal requirements area, advisers had underperformed with:
- Advice documentation, which included a Financial Services Guide (FSG), Statement/Record of Advice (SOA/ROA), Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and Fee Disclosure Statement (FDS) – the exam tested an understanding of when to issue these to clients and what is required to be included, for example fees and disclosures;
- Advice types – understanding the difference between personal advice, general advice and information, and how they applied to different client scenarios;
- Privacy Act – understanding the difference between personal and sensitive information, and whether consent had been appropriately obtained before using information; and
- Anti-money Laundering (AML) Act – identifying potentially suspicious transactions and required reporting in client advice scenarios.
When it came to financial advice construction, advisers struggled with the identification of client biases and how they might influence clients’ financial decisions and/or investment choices.
For applied ethical and professional reasoning and communication, advisers needed to better understand the application of the Code of Ethics and the Corporations Act to advice scenarios, FASEA said.
FASEA announced yesterday that 84% had passed the June exam sitting, with 85% having now passed overall.
Registration was open for the October exam which would be held on 8-13 October, and the November exam would be held on 5-10 November.
Unsuccessful candidates were able to re-sit, and FASEA would hold six more exam sittings in 2021.
The first exam in 2021 would be held from 28 January to 2 February and registration would be open from 5 October, 2020, to 8 January, 2021.
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