A new industry body aiming to provide accreditation for practitioners providing advice related to intergenerational wealth transfer has formulated a draft set of competency standards and is seeking foundation members ahead of its launch in March.
The Succession, Asset Protection and Estate Planning Advisers Association (SAPEPAA), established by LightYear Docs founder Grant Abbott and LightYear Docs group director Michael Jeffriess late last year, announced it has developed five education standards modelled on the Australian Industry and Skills Committee financial services training package.
Abbott said the five standards cover providing advice on succession, asset protection and estate planning, as well as applying taxation requirements, applying legislative and operation requirements and supporting SMSF trustees in the selection and monitoring of outsourced advice services.
“The SAPEPAA standards are built on the financial services training package standard and are a recognised Australian standard, and the packages go on the government training website [at training.gov.au],” he said during a webinar today.
“These will end up on the financial services training package register and it will probably take six to 12 months to do so. Once they are set up and ratified, any educational institution can take these standards, map them and develop courses along those lines,” he said, adding LightYear Docs was planning to provide education courses around the standards.
The draft education standards will be sent to SAPEPAA members and working groups for comment before they are ratified by the association’s board, with an additional standard, relating to business succession, possibly being added in the future.
“We don’t want to overload ourselves with a huge amount of competencies, but want to create a set of standards that enables us to stand out in our field. If we get challenged by an estate planning lawyer or an accountant around asset protection, we can say we have met the standards and it will be difficult to challenge our advice,” Abbott said.
