Financial advisers will have six further opportunities to sit the mandatory FASEA advisers’ exam in 2021 and will be able to do so at a range of set venues, or remotely, during dates spread throughout the year.
The exam sitting schedule has been released by the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA), which has set exams in 2021 for 28 January to 2 February, 25 to 30 March, 20 to 25 May, 15 to 20 July, 9 to 14 September and 4 to 9 November.
Locations for the exams have yet to be announced, but FASEA stated face-to-face sittings would be offered at metropolitan and regional locations throughout Australia and run up to twice a day, and advisers could elect to sit an exam remotely during one of the six periods above.
To date, the authority has conducted exams in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and 25 regional centres, as well as providing remote sitting options for all candidates from April 2020. It has conducted more than 340 exam sessions.
From mid-2019 to the end of the 2021 scheduled exams, FASEA will have put on 15 exam sittings and Authority chief executive Stephen Glenfield said the 2021 schedule, and the three remaining exam periods of 2020, provide advisers who have yet to pass the exam with a wide range of sitting dates.
“We have seen a strong performance by most advisers sitting the exam, with 86 per cent of candidates on average passing each exam on the first sitting,” Glenfield said.
“So nearly nine out of 10 of the existing advisers who have sat the exam have prepared well and demonstrated they have the skill to apply their knowledge of advice construction, ethics and legal requirements to the practical scenarios tested in the exam.”
Exam dates for the second half of 2020 were announced late last month, and the new 2021 dates follow moves to push back the date for all advisers to have passed the exam to the end of next year. The new deadline became a reality after parliament passed a bill extending the timeframe for the exam in mid-June.
