Prioritise ‘experienced pathway’ say advisers
With the Government declaring it wants more consultation around the final report of the Quality of Advice Review (QAR) financial advisers have expressed grave concern that the promised delivery of an ‘experienced pathway’ will become lost in the process.
Delivery of the ‘experienced pathway’ was fist flagged by the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones in 2021 when he was the Opposition spokesman on the financial services and thereafter was regarded as an election promise.
However, despite a Treasury consultation process which ended in mid-September, last year, nothing has been forthcoming from the minister beyond an indication that the issue might be brought to the Parliament around this middle of this year.
In the meantime, financial advisers have complained that the promise of the ‘experience pathway’ prompted them to put their plans on hold with respect to gaining an approved degree by 1 January 2026.
The status of the ‘experienced pathway’ was actually recognised by the Treasury within the consultation process which states:
“The Government made an election commitment to remove the requirement to undertake any additional formal study to meet the education standards for ‘experienced advisers’ – existing advisers with at least 10 years of full-time equivalent experience in Australia and a clean disciplinary record. Experienced advisers would still need to pass the exam. To implement this commitment, a new pathway could be introduced, in addition to those for existing advisers and new entrants. This consultation paper seeks feedback on the proposed eligibility criteria for this new pathway.”
Commenting on the situation, Association of Financial Advisers chief executive, Phil Anderson said he could understand why advisers were concerned about the delivery of the ‘experienced pathway’ being obscured by the level of attention being directed towards the Quality of Advice Review.
However, he said that he was equally concerned to see other facets of adviser education standards delivered, not least an expansion of the degrees recognised as eligible under the regime beyond the current narrow list.
Advisers have told Financial Newswire that in the absence of clarity around the ‘experienced pathway’ they are actively considering exiting the financial planning profession.
Jones’ failure to deliver on his “experience pathway” promise within a reasonable timeframe is a very bad sign. It reminds me of Hume’s delaying tactics in relation to removing advisers from TPB, which was a warning sign of her incompetence to come. Sadly it seems that Jones may be another dud minister.
The longer this goes on the more advisers who will lock in their plans and the industry will be presented with another cliff of advises exiting. It would help if the industry associations had the will to actively support this pathway with an agreed sunset provision.
FARSEA, the whole dam thing is a great example of how horribly butchered implementation of decent policy direction has been handled by Canberra bureaucrats and pollies, to Advice & Advisers.
Let’s start with FARSEA’s first public announcement: “any degree older than 10 years counts for nothing, all start Uni again from scratch” = WTF.
How Canberra? Just how can you’all have made soooo many, sooooo poor, sooooo stupid impediments, rules, education and just useless costly Red Tape bureaucracy gone mad, to strangle to death Advice & Advisers.
20 years of it and no solutions yet.
How about a review of the latest review?
Unbefreaking believable.
Well said and I concur.
Isn’t funny that 90% of these politicians making decisions to ruin adviser lives and business are not even degree qualified in any way? Ask them to re-sit a FASEA stile exam for politicians in order to maintain there jobs !!! Well have a failure rate of 70% plus !!!
What a joke !! Thanks associations for looking out for advisers .. Sweet FA and the like !!!!
Jones learned from the Liberals. The Libs, expecting to lose the election to Shorten promised to support the advice community if we supported them in Ousting Bill. Remember that Bill Shorten promised to remove negative gearing & remove the tax benefits of franking credits in SMSF’s.
After surprising defeating Shorten, the victory went to their heads, and every promised of support made was broken and indeed they punished the advice community. Jones is showing the exact same signs. The exodus will continue…
I don’t understand how people seem to continually be surprised by politicians saying (promising) one thing and doing another when elected!
Advisers have known about the education requirements for many, many years now and the end date has been pushed out multiple times. Whilst I understand undertaking study in the twilight years of your working career is a hard pill to swallow, but for everyone else – just get on with it !!!
The deadline is approaching and it seems like people are more interest in pointing the blame finger at everyone else but the reality is you will only have yourself to blame if you haven’t done it by 1 January 2026.
Comment provided by someone who works fulltime as an adviser and an RM in a self licensed business, 20 years experience, clean record, has a young(ish) family and no previous degree to piggyback off and I managed to do a Masters.
And all the reasons you needed to ! Young family commitments and 10 years is hardly a lifetime. Congratulations but you have no choice
For others like myself at 66 and 42 years in the business clean record etc etc why would I want to do all this study not to mention cost when my career is in its twilight I believe I still have a lot to give to the industry including but not limited to soft skills advice process and handling of difficult and unique situations that unfortunately so many that have no idea or have never experienced it or had it explained
Unless we get an option then I will be gone along with many others come Jan 1st 2026
Does the word procrastinate mean anything ??
Well said Sam, the time cost benefit ratio for elder Advisers is moronically stupid to expect anyone with basic economics / value of time and money to undertake.
But Mr Surprised, you should have to do a degree because you did NOT have one and have many years to be rewarded from work to make it time cost beneficial.
Why on earth should my Federal Govt approved Macquarie Uni double major degree in Economics and Business Law (1996 – before any Fin advice degrees existed), that being 24 x 3 unit subjects, 72 Units of study = 4 Units of hard fought FARSEA recognition of prior learning, when at first FARSE said it was a waste of 3 years of life and costs and worth nothing.
Plus add in Full DFP (2002), plus SMSF Specialist (2005), plus UTS Estate Planning Advice specialist (2013), plus 30 hrs (now 40) CPD pa for my now 24 years experience, plus 17 yrs RM for AFSL, also FARSEA said worth nothing.
And somehow FARSEA said i’m not educated or qualified to do my Advice job ? WTF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Com’on Mr Surprised get off the high horse.
The whole process / implementation of FARSEA has been a disgusting debacle and that’s why it got moved sideways to ASIC.
Right policy intention (15 to 20 years post fact when Canberra was told by Advisers to increase education) but Disaster real world implementation.
Thank you for assuming I am a Mr – it is Mrs actually and there is no high horse here, just sharing my opinion!
You weren’t 66 when the announcement was made. That’s why they gave such a long lead in time.
Why would you want to do the study? Sometimes it’s not about you but about your peers your industry. Sam you had 42 years to get qualified and you’re one small part of the problem. You operated at minimum levels and got caught out and took down your peers with Degrees at the same time. Whilst I’m sure you’re a professional you’re not part of a profession, and if we were, you would have got an exemption for your experience. I sympathise, because we all got blamed for CEO’s mistakes but we had no defense and no advocacy. Those CEO’s did the crime and we’re doing the time. But you still have time and I’m sure if you just considered it another business expense you’d get on with it. It’s not as hard to get the study. In fact, you could have done an entire Masters Degree from scratch by now, and still be working for years and leave when you want to.
You totally missed the point.
No matter how qualified Sam got in the last 42 years, none of those qualifications would be considered sufficient to avoid the degree entirely.
We’ve been in an industry which has been continually evolving, with new training requirements every 5/10 years and have continually” rolled over” to appease the government of the day (thanks to the Adviser ” but to no avail… They just continue to shift the goal posts to something different to cause more angst and cost.
So, you do your degree… with only 10 years you should have to complete a degree, but for us who have been 40+ years in the industry, we’ll be the ones who will help with your professional year.
You’ll find out what the problems really are… 10 years down the track, we’ll get a Royal Commission into the Industry Super Funds and advisers will end up holding the can again, with a new heap of ethical requirements to be shoved down our throats for no reason but to make the (ill-informed and poorly lead) government of the day look like their doing something to “fix” the situation.
So just get ready to be the next punching bag.
Good!!! Don’t go ahead with the experienced pathways; get the studies done. This will lift the industry professionalism, and solidify advisers doing the best advice for their clients which I believe will result in the compliance and regulatory burden dropping over time. If you need to put in the work to become an adviser, it will remove the lazy and unethical advisers sticking around and even entering the industry. Focus on decreasing the compliance burden, not the overall adviser’s holistic base skills required.
Agreed, the industry needs to lift the bar on education but moving the goal posts retrospectively on practitioners that have met the prevailing industry requirements of the time is unheard of. Sure, a degree for new entrants & let the ‘uneducated’ depart the industry by natural attrition. The way it’s going no-one will be left by 2026 anyway. Everyone that has passed the FASEA exam has been deemed competent to advise. How does that situation change in 2026? In my case I only need to do the ethics subject. It’s an AQF 7 subject. I’ve done ethics twice previously at AQF 9. Where is the sense in that & how does that “solidify advisers doing the best advice for their clients”? We have mandated ongoing education, a code of conduct, a hostile complaints/disciplinary body, rafts of regulation & we’re all subject to the law. Enough already.
Agree. There was more than enough lead in time. I have not enjoyed the units I have had to do, however I am supportive of bringing our industry to a profession and see the bigger picture rather than a self centred bubble some others seem to be in
You’re quite wrong.
Experience has shown that Financial Advisers, no matter how qualified they are, no matter how much study they’ve done are a minority group when it comes to legislation.
You’re insistance that every adviser without a degree must go is a poorly thought out concept which will ultimately continue to make you a slave to the politician, because without our voices, your say will count for nought.
So sit up in your tower of ivory cards, and expect the best outcome. Sadly, you will find it will never come, because our experience over 40+ years shows us that governments don’t ask minority pawns.
I’m 67 so I won’t be completing extra education when I did more than what was necessary at the time and those exams were not open book either. Gained several other accreds along the way for SMSF etc, and complete more than 40 hrs cpd. Whilst it would be nice to get an experienced extension, I can’t hang my hat on it. I can always be an associate adviser or paraplanner or client services officer. I’ve long held the belief that the experience pathway should only be for advisers over 60 as well as the other clean record stuff etc. If QAR gets up then I won’t care anyway, that will suit me just fine. Or I could go and work at an industry fund, hey?
I think the industry did itself a great disservice over the years by not mandating education. We need academic qualifications to be recognised as a profession but each ‘experience’ case should be considered individually ON IT’s MERITS. I entered the industry with two subjects of a diploma & was actually considered highly trained at the time. A diploma got you CFP status back then & was considered the duck’s gits. There were no financial planning Grad Dips or Masters available, so I did a MBA (finance & law). I re-did the CFP course & AEPS also. So I’m DFP, CFP, AEPS, MBA with 25 clean years of experience. Also FASEA & then there’s RM for an AFSL. The current regime still requires me to do a Mickey Mouse ‘industry specific’ ethics subject at AQF7 to satisfy the education requirement when I’ve already completed ethics twice at AQF9 level. WTF? Ethics is a normative theory, nothing industry specific about it. There was WAY too much vested interest from the education sector in FASEA. If we had a peak industry body (FPA & AFA don’t even go close) some sensible lobbying could be done on the behalf of advisers. What happened to Recognition of Previous Learning & Recognition of Current Competency? Surely FASEA covered this requirement? Or, is the position that government is prepared to allow ‘uneducated’ advisers to ‘run riot’ for several years without the required academic qualifications? It’s binary………..we’re competent or not at this point in time. So why any additional requirements for existing advisers? The whole FASEA process was conflicted from the beginning. I’ve been in meetings to get university courses FASEA approved & they were totally farce. FASEA was just a cash cow. Treasury seems to be a new set of eyes & on the right path, but timely implementation is key. The worst action you can take is no action at all.