The Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) has called on the federal government to support efforts to increase the number of financial advisers following the most recent exit of practitioners driven by regulatory change.
FAAA chief executive Sarah Abood said the number of practising advisers was around 15,000 following the 31 December 2025 deadline to inform the Australian Securities and Investments Commission that a practitioner had met the qualification standards required to provide advice.
“We think the industry will settle somewhere around 15,000, we won’t know until next week because of the deadlines for licensees to update the register, but that’s the last big exit event,” Abood said during a media briefing today regarding FAAA’s pre-budget submission.
“We’re really focusing from here on in regrowing the profession and looking for the government to support us in that in a couple of really important ways and one of them is how inflexible the education standards are.”
She noted new entrants had to complete a prescribed degree and match every course unit, name and number to a register of courses to qualify to enter the professional year (PY), but there was still no recognition of study in related fields that may be relevant to providing advice.
“It’s almost a year ago today the government came out with a statement responding to a proposal from the Joint Association Working Group to make the entry standard more flexible and to recognise university study that had been undertaken that is relevant to the financial advice profession,” she stated.
She added the proposal was to reduce the number of units in a degree focused on financial planning and recognising that a commerce or economics degree had content that would be relevant.
“The then financial services minister Stephen Jones announced they were going to implement that and we don’t yet know what’s happening a year later,” she noted.
“We think that’s urgent and would open up the number of students that are in a position to consider entering the financial planning profession.”
FAAA also called on the government to support small financial planning businesses who take on a PY candidate in the same way it does with those who take on a trade apprentice, and for scholarships to attract women into the advice sector.
Abood said moves to lower the ASIC adviser levy and make the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort more sustainable would also enhance the profile of financial advice as a career as the current increasing costs associated with both are discouraging people from entering the profession.
