The SMSF Association is lobbying the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) for its professional designations and specialisation courses to be included as recognised prior learning (RPL) elements in its educational requirements for existing financial advisers.
“There is a category of completion of education undertaken in the process of obtaining an approved professional designation that will give you two credits [toward the FASEA education requirements]. This is about education you’ve done to achieve a professional designation approved by FASEA,” SMSF Association head of policy Jordan George said during the industry body’s final Legislation, Regulation and Policy Update for 2018.
“This is something where the SMSF Association will be advocating to FASEA that the SSA (SMSF Specialist Advisor) [designation] should be able to give you some credit towards meeting these obligations.”
George emphasised FASEA has declared it will offer no RPL credits exempting existing financial advisers from having to complete the ethics component of the bridging course.
However, he pointed out the association would be calling for other education activities its members have carried out to qualify for further RPL credits.
“RPL can be awarded for the financial advice regulatory legal obligations course, as well as a behavioural finance course,” he noted.
“One of the questions we had around this was about our members who have done the SMSF Graduation Certificate through Kaplan or the University of Adelaide or who have done the Understanding SMSF Trustees course, which is a behavioural finance course. We would expect those courses would give you RPL [so as not to have to do some of the bridging courses].”
