Specialist training and coaching provider, Strategic Consulting and Training (SCAT) has rebranded Certainty Advice Group and developed a new designation to help consumers identify professional advisers with the right skills and approach to remove financial complexity and deliver certainty.
The Certainty Adviser (CA) designation, which has been trademarked with IP Australia and is in the process of gaining a certification mark from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), will be officially launched at the group’s Cultivating Advice Conference in Sydney this week. Membership will be open to aligned and non-aligned advisers and accountants who meet three key criteria.
They must serve the public good. They must not receive any revenue, or accept any financial benefit, from a product or service provider; and they must adopt the fee and disclosure guidelines set out in the Accounting Professional and Ethical Standards Board’s originally proposed APES 230 standard. Certainty Advice Group managing director Jim Stackpool said the new name and designation reflected the group’s sharper focus on partnering with advisers who specialised in the removal of financial uncertainty and its expanded mission to make advice irresistible and lay the cornerstone for an improved, compelling advice proposition.
“We are continuing SCAT’s work of helping advisers build productive, scalable and profitable practices only we have much bolder and ambitious goals,” he said. “We want to reinvent advice and educate consumers about what advice should look like and ultimately deliver. In most cases, it will bear little resemblance to what they’re likely to experience today.”
“So far we are happy with the consumer reaction. Since the launch of my financial advice book for consumers last year, we’re now getting 2000 hits per month on the book site. We introduce relevant enquiries to our certified advisers as part of our approach.”
A key plank in the group’s strategy to change the tainted public perception of financial planning is to attract over 100 Certainty Advisers Australia-wide and get them actively talking about the value they add. These “remarkable stories” will illustrate the group’s “new world” approach and how it differs from the “old world” product and transaction-based approach, Stackpool said.
So far there are 20 Certainty Advisers. They come from seven firms which have been part of the Cultivating Advice program for years, including Perth-based The Wealth Designers. According to TWD general manager Paul Heatley and managing director Troy MacMillan, the CA mark is the mark of an adviser who has been independently deemed to provide comprehensive advice that leads to improved client outcomes and greater financial certainty.
“Our mission is to add greater financial certainty to peoples’ lives and change the negative perception of the financial advice industry,” Heatley said.
“It won’t be easy which is why we need to gather a group of accredited advisers working together to get the right message out there.”
to maintain the designation. The fees cover the cost of biannual audits, online forums, practical
articles and content, ongoing support, and potentially client leads.
Advisers must regularly provide evidence that their advice and practices are aligned to the Certainty
Adviser model. They must also foster a collaborative culture of knowledge sharing and
encouragement. Over time, there must also be quantitative evidence of customer satisfaction.
