The chair of the Financial Planning Association of Australia, Matthew Rowe, says the board of the association will press ahead with a series of significant reforms, “now that we know what the organisation will look like, that it will be a professional body for individual practitioners”.
“I don’t think anyone should underestimate the significance of today,” Rowe says.
“Today we’ve witnessed the birth of financial planning as a profession in Australia.
“We’ve been accused of not fighting enough in the past, and of being a soft target. But we haven’t had 8000 members with one voice, because we have not had a common purpose. We have now galvanised that membership.”
High on the board’s agenda will be a simplification of the FPA’s committee structure. It currently has 21 committees with 222 participants. Eight of the committees have no formal terms of reference.
“Now we know what the FPA is, the first step is to rationalise that,” Rowe says.
“There will be an announcement made in the next two weeks about what that will look like.”
Rowe says the board has completely reviewed the organisation and taken a number of steps already – such as closing the Melbourne office and reviewing all service providers to the association.
Rowe says a new business plan has been formulated “around member engagement”.
“We own the professional space; we own education, standards and conduct. The next bit is around the membership space. We’re looking to start advertising and branding and promoting FPA members. We’re spending $15 million on this in the next five years to promote the FPA brand, starting in the second half of this year.”
Rowe says a key message that the association has been at pains to convey to members is that there’s a difference between a professional body and a membership or industry association.
“A professional body acts in the public interest,” Rowe says.
“An membership body or an industry body is solely there for the commercial gain of the members. There’s a significant difference.”
Rowe said that today’s overwhelmingly positive member vote has moved the FPA to a point where implementation of a long-term strategy can begin.
“Now we go into the implementation stage,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff that we’re ready to roll out.”
Earlier, members of the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) had resoundingly approved a restructuring proposal that will establish the FPA as the first professional association for financial planners in Australia.
The proposal received 94 per cent approval – and more than ten times as many members as had ever voted on any FPA business before. Almost half of all 8000 or so eligible FPA members cast a vote.
The result gives the FPA board the green light for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the association.
“We have not just scraped this across the line through force of personality,” Rowe says.
“We have a mandate. Our members have stood up and with one voice have said, ‘We want to be a professional body; we want to have our profession recognised in the community – and we are willing to accept change’.
“We’ve spoken about a ‘new FPA’ – but that’s not just around branding and a logo. It’s literally formed today. It’s a new organisation. It’s about clearly stating why we are here, and what we are here to do. It’s about no longer being a soft target. And it’s about professional recognition in the community.”
If the difference between a professional body, and an industry association, is the distinction of lobbying for the commercial interests of advisers then the FPA has clearly been a total failure for the last decade!
The failure to lobby against the restriction on remuneration methods, and the failure to successfully lobby against the opt-in legislation, will lead to the commercial demise of many private advisory practices.
The failure to lobby for a level playing field has ensured independent advisory practices struggle to compete with the subsidised and biased advice services of banks and superannuation funds.
The failure to lobby against government regulations has ensured that the future commercial interests of advisers are now dependent, more than ever, on employment or franchising with large product groups.
So when exactly has the FPA lobbied for the commercial interests of advisers? Or perhaps the FPA is finally admitting that they were always acting purely in the commercial interests of the product groups?