“Our system now is much more advanced than the United States, even just in the way they determine how many points are attributed,” Elixir Consulting managing director Sue Viskovic told InvestorDaily.
“With the system in the United States, it’s purely by time so if you spend an hour doing the [required] activities you will get a point, whereas our system looks into the qualitative factors such as whether it’s an interactive style of training or is it just reading an article,” she said.
“We actually take into account the likelihood of how advisers will grasp and understand the topic.”
Ms Viskovic’s comments come in light of the United States’ Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards consideration as to whether the topic of practice management should be included as appropriate continuing education (CE).
“Practice management is already included and covered in Australia’s system,” she said.
“What they call CE in America is actually CPD in Australia and what’s appropriate for certified financial planners (CFPs) from a CPD perspective is covered by our CPD policy.”
However, Ms Viskovic clarified that the Australian system did not have one CE policy for CFPs and then a separate CPD policy for everyone else.
“There’s one CPD policy that covers every financial adviser in Australia,” she said.
“However, CFPs have a greater requirement where they must cover more points in any year than a non-CFP adviser and also cover a broad range of different content so it’s in line with how they provide advice.”
The extent of which practice management was now covered within Australian CPD was strong, Ms Viskovic said.
“If you talk about practice management in terms of managing your staff and cash flow, I would say those topics don’t add value to the actual advice that’s being delivered to clients,” she said.
“But if you cover managing staff in the way of ensuring you have a good team that’s delivering the advice and there are effective processes in place, I think that is appropriate CPD.”
She said practice management was covered in the FPA’s Professional Dimensions model on CPD.
