The Financial Planning Association (FPA) is working to ensure that financial planners holding the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation can use it to comply with the “degree-or-degree-equivalent” provisions of draft new education standards.
The standards, contained in a Bill expected to be introduced into the parliament this year following the re-election of the Turnbull government, require all existing financial planners to meet tough new education standards by January 1, 2024.
A bachelor’s degree complies with level seven of the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). While the government has explicitly stated that existing financial planners will not be required to obtain a bachelor’s degree, they will be required to upgrade existing qualifications to a minimum AQF7 level.
A diploma of financial planning – the current minimum qualification for financial planners – complies with AQF5. But the chief executive officer of the FPA, Dante De Gori, told the association’s roadshow in Melbourne last week that the CFP course is recognised by 17 universities as exceeding AQF7.
“If your highest level of qualification is, for example, the advanced diploma [AQF6], you will have to do some further study, some kind of bridging course that will take your qualification up to AQF7 or above – a graduate diploma, perhaps – and one thing we’ll be doing is negotiating with the independent body to have the CFP course recognised as degree or equivalent,” De Gori said.
De Gori said approval for the CFP course will not happen automatically.
“Everybody who wants their course to be approved by this body will have to submit it, but we’re very confident,” he said.
“The CFP course is already recognised academically at an AQF9 level for the purposes of recognition and exemptions from master’s programs.”
No need to confuse the consumer
De Gori said bigger questions remain about whether all CFPs can count their designation as their degree- or degree-equivalent qualification. A cohort of FPA members received the CFP designation based on their prior industry experience, and have not completed the same educational program that later CFPs did.
“We’re confident it’s degree or equivalent, but of course there’s questions over whether or not that means that everybody who’s got the CFP will automatically pass,” De Gori said.
“If you have not done the CFP program, does that enable you to allow the CFP to be your degree equivalent or not?”
De Gori said that from a consumer’s point of view there should be no distinction between CFPs who achieved the designation by completing the course and those who did not.
“To be very clear, and I know a lot of people like to raise this point about the different process or pathways that people obtain the CFP, but the reality of life is that can be replicated in any other industry, any other profession, where people obtain their quals or their standing in the profession under the rules of the day,” he said.
“As a CFP it’s not only the way you obtained it, but you have to maintain it as well. Your obligation to maintain the CFP is just as important as the process you did to obtain it, So I think it’s wrong, I do not agree with trying to differentiate between the two.
“Obviously from a pure study and academic perspective there is a difference, I grant you that. But you know what? The accountants are in the same boat. Not everyone obtained a CPA the same way that you obtain it now. So it is an issue that’s just part of life.”
Watch this space
De Gori said the nature and the content of the CFP program has evolved since it was first introduced.
“People who do the CFP program in 10 years’ time will have had to do something different from people who are doing it now,” he said.
“That’s just part of it. So I do not accept that we should be [distinguishing]. I think that just confuses consumers even more.”
De Gori said the association is also working to help planners with AQF6 or lesser qualifications to upgrade to meet the new standards.
“What I will say is anyone that has as their highest level of qualification a diploma or advanced diploma, there will be further study needed,” De Gori said.
“And the FPA is looking at some solutions for you that we’ll come back to the membership with by the end of this year, in terms of some options around that.
“If you have qualifications that are a degree or higher, including the CFP, then we believe that will be fine – but again, more detail to come and we’ll provide that as and when we know it.”
