The heads of three industry bodies have recognised the need for more universities to participate in the provision of formal education courses for the financial planning profession and the benefits such a development will bring.
“At the moment there are no Group of 8 universities that offer qualifications in this space. UNSW did have a graduate certificate or diploma but that’s now closed to new entrants,” Financial Advice Association Australia chief executive Sarah Abood told delegates at the Stockbrokers and Investment Advisers Association (SIAA) 2024 Conference held in Melbourne yesterday.
She pointed out this fact is significant and limiting for the financial advice sector as these learning institutions combined educate around 25 per cent of all university students.
“That’s something like 425,000 people and that’s a huge pool of students we don’t currently have access to,” she noted.
Abood acknowledged the presence of a set of dedicated financial advice courses would in itself have a significant impact.
“We know that people don’t necessarily spring from the cradle wanting to be a [financial] planner, they often don’t even know about the profession sometimes until they come across it at university.
“So they might have started an accounting degree of commerce degree and they might do an introduction to financial planning elective and say ‘actually this is really cool, I really like this. This is something I’d like to do.’ That’s not available to any of those students.
“At the moment you do come across [financial] planning later you’ll have to change universities, change course, start again and cost yourself tens of thousands in HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) so it increases the barrier to entry.
“It means there’s a pool of high quality students that at the moment we don’t have access the ability to access.”
Fellow panellist SMSF Association chief executive Peter Burgess reinforced the importance of having a greater level of university support for the sector.
“It’s important that we do have the universities on board because then they will obviously help advocate and promote the benefits of this profession,” Burgess said.
SIAA chief executive Judith Fox revealed the stockbroking sector has firsthand experience of limitations of this type of framework.
“In Western Australia traditionally we’ve recruited, in our industry, from the University of Western Australia and in fact if you do a commerce degree there they’ve got a state of the art trading room and it’s absolutely fantastic,” Fox said.
“But no one coming out with a degree in commerce from UWA is considered qualified [to become a stockbroker]. They have to go off to Curtin University and do a second degree.
“So there’s an issue there where only one university that offers one course in entire state.”
