The removal of grandfathered commissions, a decrease in insurance commissions and a rise in compliance and ASIC costs has forced a lot of smaller product-based practices to rethink their business model. An obvious solution is to move to a fee-for-advice model but this is often easier said than done. It is much more than a mathematical […]
Here’s why: (a) It’s part of your ethical obligations In December 2021, ASIC released an Information Sheet INFO267, titled Tips for giving limited advice. Although ASIC uses the term ‘limited advice’, it is referring to ‘limited personal advice’ (i.e. scaled advice). In the section, sub-titled, “Revising the subject matter of advice”, the following example appears: […]
Many advisers struggling to pass the adviser exam have asked me what I think of the option of transferring to a general advice licensee. This is a way of circumventing the need to pass the FASEA adviser exam because the Code of Ethics only applies to personal advice provided to retail clients. The Code doesn’t […]
The adviser exam is pitched at AQF7 level, which is basically 1st year University standard. To pass, you will need at least 65%. Unlike University exams where the lecturer and / or tutors set and mark the exam, the open-ended questions are farmed out to contract markers who did not set the exam. Therefore, the […]
A lot of advisers ask me how much time to devote to study in preparation for the adviser exam. It really depends how much lead time you are giving yourself. That is, how many weeks before the exam will you start to study. In my view, the ideal is 12-weeks. I know this time frame […]
Enormous changes that would normally take 20 years to filter through any other industry are currently being crunched though the financial advice industry in a very condensed time frame. Older advisers are being hit the hardest and it is taking a toll. But the pain is by no means over. Whilst passing the adviser exam […]
OPINION ARTICLE Passing the adviser exam is critical to staying in the industry but it’s not the biggest challenge heading the way of licensees and self-employed financial advisers. How to structure advice services and remuneration into the future will be a challenge soon to be faced by commission dependent advisers. And this is not only […]
One of the most challenging aspects of preparing for this exam is to understand the volume of current law underpinning the provision of advice. However, a good working knowledge of the current rules is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, it is hard to understand the additional impacts of the new Code of Ethics with knowing the […]
#1 June Exam Wrap-up This is the first of a 6-part series of insights into the FASEA adviser exam. Some 600 advisers sat the first round of FASEA exams this month. Even though the specific content of future exams will continue to change across and within the next 8 sittings or so, there are some […]
If you are an existing adviser, you have until the end of 2020 to pass the adviser exam. I have had a few advisers ask me this same question lately: “Can I dodge the exam and retain my business after 1 January 2021 by employing a financial adviser to service new and existing clients while […]