The future growth of financial planning as a profession and as an attractive career will be built on three pillars of student engagement, professionalism and consumer awareness, the chief executive officer of the Financial Planning Association, Dante de Gori, has told the association’s 2016 Professionals Congress in Perth.
De Gori said the FPA will next year launch a consumer-focused education and awareness program to help more people understand what financial planning is and what it can do for them.
“The FPA in 2017 will be launching Money & Life, an online destination dedicated to helping Australians improve their financial wellbeing,” he said.
“We’ll be calling upon you to provide your expertise and stories so we can talk directly to consumers. More details will be following soon.”
De Gori said “being future ready comes down to one word, and that is: growth – growth in three key areas”.
“The first, we need to grow the pipeline and the next generation of financial planners,” he says.
“We need to replenish the people you hire in your offices, the partners in your businesses and for the succession planning and the next generation of people to serve Australians.”
De Gori said this could be achieved by engaging with universities and with students across the country, and said the FPA is engaged with 25 of the 40 universities around Australia; regularly presents to students, lecturers and career fairs; and works with student associations to offer scholarships and research grants.
He said 17 universities already offer accredited financial planning courses, and discussions are underway with 10 more – including in Perth, Adelaide and Tasmania, where courses are not currently available.
He said the FPA’s regional chapters had funded 17 students to attend the 2016 congress – the first time this has happened. He said the FPA also supported the AMP University Challenge, which 400 students entered in 2016. The association is conducting student research to understand better what resources and students need in order to choose financial planning as an area of study and a potential career.
De Gori said the FPA will also develop collateral and support materials to support members’ communication with high school students to promote financial planning as a career.
The second pillar, de Gori said, is a continued push towards greater professionalism.
“It’s not a question of whether you are professional; it’s about how we are perceived as a collective group; about the pride and respect and recognition that we deserve; and the pride in the work that we do,” he said.
De Gori said the government’s tabling yesterday of legislation mandating higher education, professional and ethical standards for financial planners was “a significant step forward for the whole profession”.
“But as FPA members you would know that a degree requirement has been in place for CFPs for more than 10 years,” he said. “And we’ve had degree requirements for AFPs since 2013.
“But also significantly, in this piece of legislation that was tabled, it had the requirement to enshrine the term financial planner/financial adviser.
“This again is a significant step forward, being 10 years in the making, and many of you in this room have fought hard for that legislation.”
De Gori said another significant step in the development of a profession is ASIC’s approval of the FPA’s opt-in code, which was announced on Wednesday.
The final pillar, de Gori said, is consumers.
De Gori said the profession needs to “reach out to consumers, and we need to grow consumer awareness, and the number of Australians who have a financial planner,” he said.
“This is more than just getting advice; this is having a trusted professional by their side who they can call on when needed.”
De Gori said part of the solution to getting more people using financial planners will be technology, “but it’s more than that”.
“We have to take back the narrative; we have to take back control of what is said to consumers,” he said.
“We need to tell our stories and we need to ensure that consumers understand what financial panning is and what it can do for them.”
