FAAA board elections attract 18 candidates for three board seats

Voting for Financial Advice Association Australia board elections opened on 6 October, and 18 members have nominated for just three open seats.

The FAAA board can have a minimum of three member directors and maximum of nine, four of whom must be practising CFP professionals. Directors are elected for three-year terms and may stand for one additional term, also of three years. 

Directors receive fees of $37,600 a year, including superannuation. They are expected to attend all FAAA board meetings, which are held at least four times a year, for one day in person, and as many additional meetings, usually virtual, as required. And they are expected to serve on at least one board committee, with a time commitment of around two days a month, on top of board meeting commitments.

All FAAA ordinary CFP and practitioner members are eligible to stand for election as long as they have a current membership. Voting closes on 20 October, with the date for announcing election results still to be confirmed. The appointment of the new members takes place at the 2026 FAAA Annual General Meeting in November.

Out of the 18 candidates, 11 hold the Certified Financial Planner designation. The two practising CFP professionals with the highest number of votes plus the nominee with the next highest number of votes will be appointed as board directors. All current FAAA financial members are eligible to vote.

The candidates are Ben Ellingsen, Christine Lusher, Katrina Haskew, Lauren Walker, Lisa Smith, Michael Ha, Naomi Nicholls, Natallia Smith, Ngoc Quach, Nick Fraietta, Pedro Marin Ramirez, Peter Jacob, Rebecca Scarabelotti, Renae Anderson, Samuel Mantarro, Simone McMullin. Current board members Deborah Kent and Sheila Gutierrez-Cabacungan, whose three-year terms are ending, are standing for re-election.

Read edited biographies and key quotes from every candidate’s “pitch” statements to FAAA members.

The successful candidates will join a board led by PSK Private Wealth private client adviser Michelle Vietch, who takes over as chair from David Sharpe at the association’s AGM.

Sharpe, the FPA’s chair from May 2022 and the FAAA’s chair since its formation in 2023, when the Financial Planning Association merged with the Association of Financial Advisers, will have reached his maximum 10-year tenure as a director by then.

“The job isn’t complete. We are well aware of the challenge CSLR still poses,” Sharpe said in July, when he announced his departure. 

He said he was “under no illusions about what can be achieved by November”, and that Veitch was “both passionate and eminently qualified to continue representing FAAA members”.

Sharpe said he was most proud of how quickly and seamlessly the FAAA had formed its own identity and unified the membership of the merged associations.

He said in a media briefing in September that external stakeholders also know the FAAA as a reasonable voice with community standards and benefit at its core. 

“Everything has a consumer lens to it,” he said.

“We are not just a self-interested body. We are very clear that we represent our members and the community that we serve, and that is the nature of a profession.”

“I hope, as I finish my time, that externally, that’s the view of the FAAA as well. 

“We genuinely do care about Australians.”