The Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) has today released draft professional year requirement and draft provisional relevant provider term guidance.
The professional year is an essential component of FASEA’s educational qualifications and standards framework that all new industry entrants will be legally required to undertake before they can provide personal financial planning advice to retail clients.
FASEA proposes it will encompass practical learning of four core technical competencies that provisional relevant providers have learned during their degree studies: technical competence, client care and practice, regulatory compliance and consumer protection, and professionalism and ethics.
A quarterly approach to the supervised practical learning is proposed.
New financial advisers will undertake the professional year requirements in their first continuous 12 months of full-time employment and it is proposed they be known as provisional financial advisers during that time.
Where an adviser takes a career break for periods of less than two years, they will be able to return without additional requirements over and above professional and education standards for existing advisers.
For periods of two years or more, they will undertake appropriate continuing professional development to ensure they are equipped with the latest regulatory and licensee requirements.
The guidance also proposes that a supervisor within each advice business will be appointed to take responsibility for the provisional relevant provider’s work and training, ensure evidence is collected in a logbook and attest to the completion of their professional year requirements.
The provisional relevant provider’s licensee will also be responsible for providing the appropriate resources to ensure their training standard has been met.
FASEA also released guidance around the provisional relevant provider term, which refers to the 12-month period when a new financial adviser is undertaking their professional year work and training requirements.
It is an essential component of the standards framework to ensure it is clear to consumers when they are receiving advice from a provisional relevant provider, rather than a relevant provider.
Provisional relevant providers must be referred to as provisional financial advisers and no other similar term, including relevant provider, financial adviser or financial planner.
Other terms FASEA considered included candidate adviser, trainee adviser and supervised adviser.
FASEA welcomes feedback on any aspect of the proposed professional year and provisional relevant provider term guidance.
Submissions for both draft proposals will close on 17 August.
