[Weekly Wrap] Advice degree on the cards

Many advisers welcomed the news this week that Massey University is considering offering a financial adviser degree-level qualification.

Friday, June 21st 2013, 1:03PM

by Susan Edmunds

It ties in to something that has been talked about a lot of the past year or two - that advisers need to work towards being considered a profession.

Some of the negative feedback I heard was that it would likely be administered by academics rather than people who had direct experience in the field.

While I can understand the concern, this is true of many qualifications in one way or another - more so at the degree level than in some other qualifications. Sometimes being able to do a job well does not translate into being able to teach others, and vice versa.

Claire Matthews has made a genuine attempt to get feedback on the idea so it will be interesting to see what develops.

In other news this week, investors in embattled LMIM have been dealt another blow. One of its biggest assets, the Maddison residential development on the Gold Coast, is likely not worth anything like the debt LM is owed on it. The receivers are talking about asking unit holders to invest some more into the development as the only way to retrieve anything from it in the long term.

On the topic of disastrous investments, IFA president Nigel Tate suggested that the Ross Asset Management saga could have been avoided if there was a requirement for new AFAs to have some sort of monitoring or mentoring period when they first got into the industry. This would have been logistically difficult when regulation first came into effect and everyone became AFAs at once but ties into what the FMA has been talking about, needing more controls over the AFA registration process going forward.

I was also told this week that the level of fees paid by AFAs for registration to the FMA is out of line and there was consternation about Sovereign's latest commission offer - although not everyone agreed it was necessarily a negative move for the industry.

In other insurance news, the question of how mental health disability can be judged is being asked in Australia.

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