Top advisers will soon be able to add more letters to their title now that the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) has revealed its intention to offer a post-nominal designation.
The Fellow Chartered Financial Practitioner (FChFP) designation will be rolled out later this year and will be positioned as an equivalent or alternative to the FPA's Certified Financial Planner (CFP), AFA chief executive Richard Klipin said.
"I imagine that there will be people who will hold both; the CFP has been around a long time," he said.
From the AFA perspective the new designation will cover off the four pillars of the learning that it promotes: formal qualifications, peer to peer learning and ongoing training, experience, and sales skills.
"Education and professional standards have always been a major focus of the AFA since our founding in 1946," AFA education and professional standards committee chairman Jim Taggart said.
"Consumers want to know they are dealing with educated, experienced and competent advisers. It's about creating a trusted adviser relationship."
The finer points of the new qualification, such as the pre-requisites, duration and content of study will be announced by the AFA later, Klipin said.
However, the advice/client sales skills would definitely be covered within the new qualification. "It's not been a strong part of the curriculum and it used to be a key point of induction and ongoing training for all advisers particularly new ones," Klipin said.
