FPA chief executive Dante De Gori

Once advisers all attain the same education standard the industry will start to focus on specialisation, FPA chief executive Dante De Gori said in a panel to open the 2018 Conexus Financial Retirement Conference.

“It’s inevitable that we are going to have greater specialisations,” De Gori said.

The education benchmarks set by the Financial Adviser Standards and Education Authority are important, De Gori noted, because they set a base of “GP-level knowledge”.

“The next step up, post-FASEA, is how you then build true specialisations in the profession going forward,” De Gori said.

Retirement is a prime example of an area that is worthy of having dedicated advice specialists, De Gori ventured.

“Post-retirement is going to be a thing that advisers are going to specialise in,” he said. “In fact, I believe there will be a time when the first time you actually see clients will be in retirement… because you’ll be living as long in retirement as you do in pre-retirement.”

Deborah Ralston, chair of the Self-Managed Superannuation Fund Association, who was chairing the panel, agreed with De Gori and noted that SMSFs are another area of advice that warrants specialisation.

“Certainly, from the SMSF Association’s point of view, we’d like to see specialist accreditation there,” Ralston said. “When you look at the things that have cropped up in the royal commission, invariably it’s because there isn’t specialist advice, so I think we’re at the beginning of a long cycle of maturity in terms of what is on offer.”

The Financial Planning Association CEO said we could look to the US for a template, where advice specialisation is the norm.

“I know we don’t have the same population as the US, but they have specialisations across a whole range of different areas,” De Gori said. “One that really stuck out to me was specialist divorce financial planners, who just deal with divorced clients.”

The Australian advice market does not currently have a significant niche advice sector, De Gori said.

“At the moment, to be quite frank, there are no specialists. There are some that are on a pathway and others, effectively, that are self-claimed,” he explained. “We need more qualifications and an actual pathway with which to become a true specialist within the profession. I think that’s the next step.”

Join the discussion