The financial planning industry is at a tipping point and the result of the upcoming Financial Planning Association of Australia members’ vote on restructuring will determine whether it tips into becoming a profession, or into irrelevance, according to the chief executive of the FPA, Mark Rantall.
Rantall told an association meeting in Sydney that getting members’ approval for the restructuring was more onerous than getting a positive vote in a referendum.
He said now was not the time for “the vast silent majority” of the association to sit on its hands and allow the debate and the issues to be hijacked by a vocal minority with a very narrow set of interests to push.
Proxy voting for the membership restructuring opens on March 14 and the final vote will be announced at an extraordinary general meeting of the FPA in Melbourne on April 7.
If members approve the proposal, principal membership of the FPA will be abolished and voting rights will rest solely with individual Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and Associate Financial Planner (AFP) members. This will send a very clear message that the FPA is an association focused on the professional responsibilities and development of individual planners.
Rantall urged members to think very carefully what a professional association should look like and what it should do. He said there were structures and procedures that any professional organisation must have before it can be recognised as such, and as things currently stand, the FPA is the only organisation in the country that qualifies.
He said the FPA’s mission was to develop financial planning into “a universally-respected profession”.
“I hope you get the sense that things are changing, around not only the FPA but around you as professionals,” Rantall said.
In addition to restructuring, Rantall said the FPA was actively engaging with policymakers to ensure that regulatory changes, such as the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) package, contained as few unintended consequences as possible. But he also urged individual members to make a noise about proposed changes that could adversely affect their businesses and relationships with clients.
He said FPA members should let their local members of Parliament know how financial planning works, and why some aspects of the FoFA proposals – particularly opt-in – could have very serious negative consequences for the delivery of financial planning services.
Rantall said that about 320 financial planning practices had indicated they would take up the new Professional Practice designation, indicating that more than half of the planners employed in the practice hold a CFP qualification. He said the FPA was optimistic that as many as 1000 would eventually seek the designation.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.