Deliberate adviser culling at heart of FASEA regime says AIOFP
The Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) regime was the result of an agenda aimed at “culling” financial advisers, according to a letter sent to Federal Parliamentarians by the Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals (AIOFP).
The letter, signed by AIOFP executive director, Peter Johnston also alerted the parliamentarians to “an event that has caused the suicide deaths of 29 people over the past five years and we are fearful this will cause more by October 1st”.
According to AIOFP letter, “The Financial Adviser Standards & Ethics Authority [FASEA] Legislation was a theoretically sound strategy, but it was used mischievously and cruelly by the Liberal Party to please their Institutional backers to remove Financial Advisers [Advisers] from the financial services landscape in favor of Digital Advice”.
“In recent times we have met with past senior FASEA staff and Lawyers who helped draft the Legislation and the theme of ‘culling’ Advisers was clearly on their agenda, directed by the FASEA Board and ultimately sanctioned by the Ministers office,” the letter said.
“FASEA as an entity has been eliminated but the Legislation is cruelly still in place. A nefariously and perversely structured Exam format has been used to intimidate mainly mature Advisers who have not sat for Exams in decades. Many lack the IT skills or have physical imperfections to cope [ie eyesight], but they are very good at what they do, giving Advice to their clients.
“On OCTOBER 1st 2022 up to 1,000 mainly senior Advisers who are having difficulty passing an Exam format [whose format has never been seen before in the global Education universe] will face immediate extermination from the Advice industry unless they pass after their third attempt.
“Ambiguously framed questions within a Masters Level, 3 hour format where examiners have the flexibility to pass or fail students with no feedback on results, just a FAIL or PASS notification. There is little doubt this Exam was structured to ‘cull’ Advisers at the whim of the FASEA Board,” the AIOFP letter said.
“A bizarre condition of the Exam is if the Adviser FAILED it twice [not once but twice….] before 1/1/2022, they could stay in the industry until 1/10/2022 and remain if they passed it before this date.
“Considering the sitting fee is $973 per Adviser per exam sitting, the question of commerciality comes into the discussion about failing Students.”
“Over the past 3 years around 15,000 Advisers have left the industry, we cannot afford to lose any more. This does not take into account the 30,000 administration staff losing their jobs and 1,500,000 clients left orphaned without an Adviser.”
“Another 1,000 Advisers being forced out translates into another 2,000 Administration jobs gone and 100,000 consumers orphaned based on 100 clients per adviser. There are widespread mental health issues within this cohort of Advisers and their families facing financial ruin. We can only hope there will be no further suicides. “
“This unfortunate situation originated from 3 Institutionally aligned Associations masquerading as ‘Adviser Associations’, backing the Minister then convincing Parliament that the FASEA and Life Insurance Framework [LIF] Legislation was in the best interests of Consumers and the Advice industry.”
“This has been an unmitigated disaster for ALL stakeholders, particularly Consumers who now either have no Adviser to assist them, paying triple for advice than 5 years ago and/or paying double for Insurance premiums.”
“Most Politicians did not understand our industry, the Legislation and the ramifications but voted ‘blindly’ in favor of it.
“Our request going forward is to ensure that the Association you want advice from is ‘true to label’ to the information you are seeking. The financial services industry is very diverse with numerous self-interested factions pushing their own agenda.”
The 100% truth . The FASEA exam was farcical in its content, ambiguity and relevance.
This has been bleedingly obvious for some time. The increasing failure rate of the FASEA exam towards the end as they adjusted pass marks to make sure that targets were reached. This is all part of agenda 2030 a more feminine and controllable society. Since our education system is now designed to promote women into university with so called gender neutral subjects like maths and the sciences (dumded down and verbalised to the point of bordon) while introducing degree requirements to keep men out of the profession, FASEA was designed to clear out all the mature men in the industry to make way for women.
Then the rude shock will come. Equality used as an excuse to move to a Socialist system and the rewards of capitalism lost.
Eve has once again been used to further the goals of the one world globalist has they continue to collapse capitalism and move towards totalitarian socialism where men will no longer do anything about it. Check mate. 2030 is now.
..the controlled demolition of society…
We said John!
Yeap…banning commissions then insurance trail within super, back to school costs , ASIC levys, exam costs. 45% increase in PI insurance, 35% increase in dealership costs, Consent forms and chasing renewals etc etc You saw how they did it with lockdowns. In order to create you must first destroy!
No worries John … with your hatred of women shining through there will continue to be few women wanting to join the ranks of our industry. And goodness …why would we want women in university. The economy would do so much better if they stay home, uneducated, raise their children with uneducated opinions, and ensure men only can have jobs so they feel important and in control and relevant. But what perplexes me most ….. If everything has been dumbed down so that stupid women can get into uni and pass, then surely the men can pass too? Being so much smarter. Or they get bored and can’t concentrate … is that the issue?? Poor them.
Throughout history and even recent history people have used words like communist, witch, capitalist, homophobe, sexist, misogynist etc to shut down debate. That shit doesn’t work with me. Ive learnt from history.I don’t hate anyone and if I did it would be men especially those running the show in which direction our society is going in. I don’t blame women for what is going on and we are all being used to bring about a more controlled society. That so called sterotypical women in the kitchen comment is me. I do in excess of 80% of those things mentioned and demonising it in the way you did is poor form. We are at a tipping point in our society and pretending to be about equality when all we are getting is inequality in the opposite direction is just hypocrisy. It does nothing but drive us away from our true potential and toward mediocrity. There must be a balance especially of opportunity otherwise society goes backwards and when we get to the point where people can’t even decide what a women or man is, its sad. I suggest you look at what I wrote and what you wrote and decide where the real sexism lies and whether you have a touch of misandry in yourself. It was a wake up call to what’s coming if we don’t address it and remain divided. If you think our university have the best candidates then our society say different.
I showed your comment around and everyone was pretty clear who the misogynist is John – because we wouldn’t want a feminine society would we John. Because that would be bad. Feminine = bad. Feminine = controlled. If that is not what you are trying to convey … then maybe before posting you should get some help with your posts. If your point is to criticise unis for dumbing down, critcise unis … not the need to “dumb down” to promote women. They dumb down to make money after being de-funded by governments. What is this weird connection to the feminisation of society??? What is a gender neutral subject??? And why would it need to be “dumbed down to promote women”, if you think men and women are equally smart? Maybe you can’t see your own negativity against women. But my colleagues who also read your comment were shocked.
I finally passed on the third attempt. I’m a pure Risk Adviser and have no intention of studying, I got no recognition for prior learning because they deemed the subject were done years ago. Does an Economics degree still stack up after 25 years. I’ve been in the industry 37 years and come 31/12/2026 that experience will walk out the door.
Your situation is what is so wrong with the blunt hammer they have used. We need wisdom in this profession not just good exam marks.
I must agree with the comments made – I undertook extensive studies through Knowledge shop to cover all areas that were required to find that was not the gist of the exam but hypothetical situations that, as a professional you would have researched the particular matter before providing advice, and expecting that you would use the links to the parts of the law through the online process which I found difficult to do given that we only had one computer screen and not being able to use that computer to facilitate other processes such as split screens. The fact that we were required to answer questions without having hard copy of all relevant parts of legislation made this process much harder and given that we did not provide comprehensive feedback of the exam results including what was obviously the impressions of the exam markers left a vey sour impression and a belief that there was a move to remove as many financial planners as possible through this exam process. I have been a financial planner since 1994 but when sitting the exam was, along with the other examinees, not allowed any other supporting information other than a piece of paper and treated by the exam invigilators as school students – their tone was both belittling and humiliating!!
The exam is only one part of the agenda to drive advisers away. Putting in place a June 30 deadline to have all fee renewals completed was the real kicker. That’s attacked adviser revenue, so that even those who passed through the FASEA minefield can be out of business. The lucky ones are those old enough to be able to retire and walk away. Bad luck to those 40-50 year old advisers with 10-20 years experience, who have kids and mortgages to pay for. They have no choice but to tiptoe through this minefield while juggling chainsaws and trying to take care of their clients. It’s little wonder that smaller fee paying clients are being sent packing or the adviser simply won’t take their call anymore. Great work legislators. Another fine example of sledgehammer policy with no thought for consequences.
The situation is so bad now that even a tiny improvement will be a ray of sunshine. The new Government won’t have to do much to be hailed the hero. Just drag a few advisers out from under the bus (to which they were thrown by the last incompetent excuse for a Government).
100% agree, I am a risk adviser, the questions in the test had double meanings, the master classes I attended ( around 4 ) were mostly about how to interpret the questions, that should have rung alarm bells to start with. The suicides are heart breaking.
Finally, someone has stated the real agenda – to clear the way for Fintech. I knew it was designed to reduce adviser numbers, and now I know why.
We’ll be hearing more from the ‘vampire squid’ (Goldman Sachs) before too long…
This has always been a thought in my head and my 70 year old partner who has failed this exam three times ?? You would not find a more ethical person but apparently ethics and age don’t combine
The damage is done and unfortunately not finished
If ever there was a need for a Royal inquest it’s over this outrageous legislation and bullying that has not only caused great stress and pain for advisers and clients but cost the lives of 29 individuals whose families are asking why? To the writers of this letter congratulations on having the “guts” to lay this out bones and all for investigation
Keep going follow it through for action I am sure there are plenty of advisers and families that will support you
The FASEA exam was clearly written to trick, fool, and rule out and thankfully I quickly realized that with the sample questions. Let’s remember the attitude is if 1-10% of Advisers fail who cares. Treasury have said if a few advisers lose their jobs that’s ok, they’ll be replaced by robots and large call centres and tic tok…(refer to Treasury review of FoFA). Johnson blames the Liberals, yet the root cause is the corruption within Treasury and ASIC. Corruption inflamed and leftover and now inbreed from 2009. Twisted Public Servants that were charged 3% entry fees and made 2% over 20 years thanks to our good friends at AMP, all now in Senior roles. Even Johnson is too afraid to go after that corruption within Treasury & ASIC because he’s a Director and company officer. As for the FPA, they’re happy to sell you a webinar or a conference too. But they have a different agenda that conflicts with the needs of Australians and Financial Advisers. Senior staffers have told me they don’t represent advisers any longer, only the wider industry. Banks left that paid in bulk and so they’re diversifying their positioning to look after Super Funds interests more. Like the AFA when it comes to representing Advisers they’re just happy keeping it’s head down, selling conferences a CFP course. Quite frankly this “culling” that should have been addressed in 2018 is corruption at the public servant level that needs to be called out.
The behaviour of many Treasury, ASIC, and AFCA employees is misuse of power to wreak indiscriminate revenge and impose personal ideology. It’s despicable and unethical, but it’s not quite corruption.
Corruption is misuse of regulatory power to unnecessarily force people to purchase more courses and textbooks, when you also make money from courses and textbooks.
As he said, the directives all came from the Minister. It WAS the Liberals that did this to you, not a conspiracy. I cannot understand why so many in the financial advice industry continue to vote that way, it is a deal with the devil (as is any vote by anyone for that vacuous, odious political party).
Peter Johnston has called it as it is. You can either take heed, or plug your ears and suffer further.
Labor started the rot with Chris Bowen and the banning of commissions. The Liberals just finished the job off. Unfortunately, every industry of independent thinkers must be brought to heed and all be reliant on government. This is how totalitarianism comes to been.
This trend of getting rid of advisors has been going on for decades now. I started back in 1978 as an insurance adviser and became a FP as soon as there was such a role. Over the years i sat and passed all the various updated exams. FALA Dip AII Dip FP and CFP. Our own association actually punished you for passing the exam by effectively doubling the fee to be a CFP rather than an AFP. (Stupid bit of incentive right there.) Then they decided that you had to pay every year or your qualification would be removed from you. No other industry seems to have that. When i first did the CFP i was told it was globally recognized . Apparently because i was out of the industry for two years my qualification disappeared for good and i was expected to go and get another degree.
FPA is definitely not helping the advisers, but is actively pushing we older advisers out.
I personally think that all the so called legislation to improve things for clients has meant that small clients and risk only clients are now either left in the cold or paying a hell of a lot more for advice. The robot firms rely on people contacting them but as we all know, must people only took insurance because an adviser contacted them.
The govt is being left to look after so many more families now that should have had insurance and been able to look after themselves.