The legal requirements for best practice within Australia's financial advisory sector are too low, with greater focus needed to boost the level of client engagement across the industry.
FPA chief executive Mark Rantall said while it was his belief the legal obligations linked to advice best practice were generally "at a minimum", industry participants should operate at a level above the minimum legal requirements.
"I think most businesses would be looking at their client engagement process with a view to having higher standards than the legal minimum," Rantall said.
He said while there were certain areas of the federal government's proposed Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms that supported the FPA's standards, other elements of FOFA that might be good practice standards should not be enshrined in law.
AMP Financial Services financial planning, advice and services director Steve Helmich said he supported the FPA push, and he too believed standards needed to be lifted.
Helmich said AMP intended to "push the bar" in best practice by making it mandatory that all of the company's planners belong to an association and any new planning entrants must be degree qualified.
"We've said there are five [associations] you can belong to - the FPA, the AFA (Association of Financial Advisers) and also because we've got accountants it can be CA (Chartered Accountants Australia) or CPA, and because we've got mortgage providers so the MFAA (Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia). But you must be a member of at least one of those," he said.
"From 2013 we've said we will only accept planners coming in who are degree qualified."
He said the support from planners for AMP's professionalism push had been strong.
"I think in this space we clearly want financial planning seen as a profession and we want to lead the way on that. When consumers think more about financial planning we want them to think about who is the most professional and we want them to think about us," he said.
Centric Wealth director of portfolio construction and management Brett Sanders said best practice and client engagement were mutli-dimensional.
"You can't just focus, in our view, on standards or having better trained advisers or having better systems. You actually need a whole package of things working together and so we'd look at it in terms of creating that culture internally," Sanders said.
"The standards are part of that, creating the environment where people can get their job done, making it very clear to them what you expect of them, having a robust theory and approach to how portfolio construction should take place, clarity of roles of advisers and other staff so they know where they fit and what the boundaries of those roles are."
