Legal skills are not the monopoly of lawyers. They can, and should, be developed by financial planners if they wish to stand alongside other professionals such as lawyers and accountants.
Legal skills are not the monopoly of lawyers. They can, and should, be developed by financial planners if they wish to stand alongside other professionals such as lawyers and accountants.
So argues Dr Malcolm Voyce, who teaches law at Macquarie University and is the convener of its masters in financial services law degree, and its DFP 4 and DFP 6 courses.
He says a serious debate on standards of education for those involved in the fi-nancial services industry is necessary.
“The role of financial planners is diverse and they need a range of skills to ensure competency and best practice. The question is which skills?” he says.
“Accounting, risk management and legal skills are three essential fundamental skills planners need to develop the financial planning paradigm.
“As regards legal skills, lawyers have regarded themselves traditionally as the appropriate sole providers of legal skills, but many planning decisions have le-gal implications.”
Voyce says many present time planners keep up to date with current developments by attending training sessions, reading commercial newsletters and receiving FPA continuing educational material.
“While some of this material is of a reasonable quality, much of it is not of sufficient depth to cover all the circumstances of clients. To deal with their client’s situations planners often need to do further research on areas not cov-ered sufficiently by these materials,” Voyce says.
Many planners, however, have become dependent on secondary materials, but, ac-cording to Voyce, they need to develop their own skills to interpret cases and read statutes.
Other professionals such as lawyers and accountants are now moving into the fi-nancial planning arena. For example, accountants (CPA) recently launched a na-tional campaign in a direct challenge to financial planners, and law firms are setting up financial planning divisions.
“If financial planners wish to stand alongside such professions, they need what I call primary skills. What is needed is the development of legal skills to de-velop the particular financial planning paradigm,” Voyce says.
