The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) recently proposed to remove itself from maintaining the educator’s training register in CP215 Assessment and approval of training courses for financial product advisers: Update to RG146.
This proposal has raised questions about education standards, including concerns of a “buyer beware” market resulting in the absence of independent third party assessment.
However, the IPA has labelled concerns about the proposal “misguided” and indicated there are misunderstandings about the functions of the ASIC register.
“There has been a misperception by some that the ASIC register was a list of recommended providers when it was only a list of training providers that have documented that they meet RG146 requirements,” chief executive officer Andrew Conway said.
“By moving to a self-regulatory model, ASIC is merely clarifying the existing reality that it does not assess individual training courses.
“There already exists a robust training and assessment regime, with mechanisms in place to ensure quality, and this is where responsibility for assessing RG146 courses should lie.”
Mr Conway added that ASIC’s resources should be focused on developing a “rigorous exam process”, which he believes would be the most effective way to raise standards.
“We are not arguing against improvements to the quality of RG146 training, but we believe the most effective way to raise standards is to have an exam process,” Mr Conway said.
“That way, every provider will need to ensure that their training will be sufficient to ensure a participant passes the ASIC exam.”
Earlier last week, financial services educator Kaplan also announced it supports ASIC’s position, claiming the regulator was “totally correct” in saying it should not take the role of monitoring education providers.
