The Financial Advice Association plans to bolster growth in the advice profession through talent from overseas, specifically India.
FAAA chief executive Sarah Abood said during a webinar on Tuesday the association is looking at reversing the decline of financial advisers in Australia by recruiting fully qualified advisers and students from this region.
She said a memorandum of understanding has been signed with the Financial Planning Standards Board in India, an area “where there are a lot financial planners”.
“We have such a strong community with Indian heritage here in Australia,” Abood said.
“If we’re able to free up cross border education and opportunities for people who might be practicing or thinking about studying in India to come to Australia, we think that’s one way we can really help drive the pipeline.”
At the 2023 Professional Planner Licensee Summit, Abood told a panel the association saw an opportunity in looking abroad for talent to replenish adviser numbers as there were fully qualified financial advisers overseas who wanted to live and work in Australia.
During the webinar, the association’s chair David Sharpe said it was an “existential threat” to the profession if the decline in numbers is not reversed.
The scope for qualified advisers
Another topic from the webinar was the issues surrounding the new class of adviser, controversially referred to as ‘Qualified Advisers’, as proposed in Tranche 2 of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes reform.
Abood said establishing the “scope” of advice that a qualified adviser can offer is essential.
“How will [the scope] be defined? Because what they can do is not as good as what a proper, professional, licensed financial planner can talk about,” Abood said.
“So how will we restrict their scope and how will we make it clear to consumers that the service they’re getting from this group is different to what they can get from a professional adviser and more constrained?”
The association suggested that the easiest way to limit the scope of the new class of adviser is to restrict them to only “engaging with the consumer on products that they already hold” to remove any complexity or confusion.
“It would also, in our view, meet the stated needs of the product issuers who said that what they’re looking to achieve with these reforms is the ability to service and support existing clients who don’t have the benefit of financial advice and probably would struggle to afford the cost of the financial advice engagement,” Abood said.
Furthermore, the association reiterated that professional advisers are unhappy with the title of this new class of advisers.
Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones told the Investment Magazine Chair Forum in January, held by the sister publication of Professional Planner, that he would likely change the name but has yet to announce a new moniker.
“The name is incredibly important for many of our members, and I think the government has underestimated how important that is,” Abood said.
“Many members don’t want to see the word adviser in there and we need our members to be able to offer this class of advice.”
This association has taken this feedback from advisers into account as well as the scope for ‘qualified advisers’ as part of their advocacy commitments.
Expanding the mission
The association’s mission is moving beyond simply the practice of advice to the “business of advice” more generally.
The business of advice is “an area where many members are looking to [the association] to provide more support in running their businesses, as well as in their professional development”, .
The association has established three priorities regarding the business of advice and the success of its members, the first being unconditional support of its members.
Abood emphasised that the association’s purpose is to support its members and so it is the first priority.
The second priority is the serious need to grow the profession and the third to lead the profession with a “bold, trusted and influential voice”.
It’s astonishing to see the FAAA now pushing for more advisers by courting “career changers” and international recruits, given their previous efforts to stifle career stability within Australia. The association actively campaigned against the experience pathway—supposedly to “appease members”—and when that strategy floundered, they lobbied for a sunset clause to ensure it would “expire.”
Having failed on both fronts, they’re now attempting to solve the very problem they helped create by filling vacancies with “teachers” and professionals from overseas, like India. This is the predictable outcome when an organisation lacks core principles; they chase the latest demand, catering to whatever or whoever is making the most noise. It’s disappointing to see the FAAA, once again, prioritising short-term solutions over sustainable support for Australian advisers.
Sorry to throw a spanner in the works, though I nearly choked on my coffee when I saw this article.
Why on earth would we even contemplate bringing in people from India who have zero ACTUAL experience in the intricacies of the Australian market, our economy, our thought processes, our way of life, when there are multiple thousands of experienced Advisers who were effectively forced out of the Industry, through no fault of their own, because of incompetent and/or greedy vested interest groups who were led by, or encouraged the Governments of the day, to go down the disastrous path we were forced down, that cost Australia muti-billions of dollars of wasted money spent, countless lives impacted or destroyed for an end result that has had ZERO net benefit.
It has become a standard in Australia, that any common sense must be vigorously rubbed out in order for institutionalized bureaucrats to gain control of the agendas and feather their own nests, while pretending they know what is going on and how to fix it, which they NEVER do, except to totally stuff up, at the majorities expense.
The solution has ALWAYS been there right in front of your faces, which as the leading example was, as I and many other Experienced Advisers have spoken about for years, was to separate Investment advice from risk advice, have specialist upfront and ongoing Education that is specific to the work that will be performed and shock / horror, put it in PLAIN ENGLISH what the Adviser does and can provide Advice on.
This template can then be expanded to other groups such as the current cause of much conjecture being Life Insurance Companies who would have limited advice capabilities, though as a replacement to all the legalize mumbo jumbo, have it all clearly spelt out in PLAIN ENGLISH, so the customer knows what they are getting and the limitations around that advice.
What we have instead today, is a children’s playground where each child wants to hang onto their own toy and not share, even though there are more toys than the kids could ever play with.
The market is WAY BIGGER than ANY of the vested interest groups could possibly handle or work well in, though because of childish behavior, Australia gets a system so complex and unworkable that as usual, the end beneficiaries, (being all Australians) of all these years of wordsmithing, are being screwed over again and again.