Financial planners will have to resume lobbying in Canberra to secure the legislative and administrative changes necessary to ensure they are allowed the full two years originally promised for the preparation and sitting of the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) planner exam.
After meeting with the Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology, Senator Jane Hume, in Melbourne last week, both Financial Planning Association (FPA) chief executive, Dante De Gori and Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) chief executive, Phil Kewin, acknowledged that Parliamentary support would be needed to ensure the time extension was delivered.
Speaking to Money Management, De Gori said the two organisations had received a sympathetic hearing from Hume but had been left in no doubt that the fact that the exam time-tabling was embedded in legislation meant that any changes would need to be dealt with by the Parliament.
The Government, with its majority in the House of Representatives, is expected to largely wave through the changes which means that financial planning organisations will need to present their arguments to the cross-benchers in the Senate.
De Gori said the key message was that financial planners were not trying to avoid the exam or take any short cuts but, rather, to be given all the of the time originally envisaged in the legislation.
The industry has complained that because of the amount of time taken by the FASEA to develop the exam and associated structures, the amount of time available to planners had been reduced to less than 18 months.
