Where am I? 
Home Better Business
Categories: Better Business
Topics: qualifications| credit rating| CII
A swathe of new RDR exams have left advisers “confused” and “crossing their fingers” their current qualifications will still be valid after 2012.
In the past four weeks, the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has released details of its Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning and its Alternative Assessment, both at QCF Level 4.
Meanwhile, the Association of IFAs (AIFA) entered the exam market with its QCF Level 5 Diploma in Investment Planning.
Confusion over how these new exams fit with existing qualifications, given their different credit weightings, as well as the limited information coming from the providers about costs and timescales, has left some advisers already heading for Level 4 now doubting the value of the FSA’s “no regrets” promise.
The FSA last year urged advisers to "get on now" and reach QCF Level 4 "with no regrets" even though the FSSC had yet to finalise the appropriate exam standards.
It pledged any gaps between existing qualifications and any new, RDR-ready, alternatives that later come to market could be filled via continuing professional development (CPD). But advisers are concerned.
"People absolutely don’t know what to do,” says Joe Cooper at national IFA Pantheon Financial Management.
“Are J0 [papers] going to be there in the future? The CII’s new diploma will not give me enough knowledge to get to the Advanced Diploma, which seems to me a step backwards.”
IFAs say they have had no guidance from the CII on how its new qualification, which they can use to finish their Diploma in Financial Planning and demands 100 credits to pass, matches up to the current 140-credit diploma.
The CII says, until it has been given the green light from the FSA, Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC), and OfQual in June, it cannot be more specific on how its new exams will work for individual advisers who are part-qualified.
Spokesman David Ross says: “The credits have changed because of the ApEx standards created by the FSSC and the FSA. But we can’t say ‘here is the qualification and here is the syllabus’ yet, because we just don’t know.”
IFA at Eastgate Financial Services Terry Arch, who is taking the ifs School of Finance Diploma for Financial Advisers (DipFA), says the new courses give “choice without information, which is no choice at all”.
He is critical of the ifs for failing to give out information such as re-sit dates, but says the problem of a lack of co-ordination on qualifications is industry-wide.
“I spend at least two hours a week chasing information on this course. Add that to the 300 hours a year recommended study time, multiplied by £125 an hour which is my rate, and this exam is costing me £50,500?”
The ifs DipFA has been available since July 2008 and Arch says the examining bodies should have got together to release their RDR-ready exams in situe if they really wanted to offer advisers choice.
“I quite like the sound of the new CII diploma but I have already invested too much in the ifs route," he says.
A spokesperson for the ifs says the body is in regular dialogue with all its corporate clients.
"All candidates who need to re-sit any exams can do this at the next available opportunity and these occur at regular points throughout the year," she says. "There are different dates for different exams obviously so it all depends on the individual circumstances.”
| Share | |
| Comment | Advisers have 'no faith in no regrets' |
More from professional adviser
Email alerts
Recommended reading
Categories
Topics
Comments
I'm throwing it all in to make sure
I have passed my Diploma in 2009 and have never been sure that it was enough. So I shall now ensure that my Cycling Proficiency, 25 yards swimming, and Sea Scout life saving badges must up the points needed anti,CSE grade 5 French and part 1 RICS exams will tide me over the newly moved finishing line which, I am told, you will now need in addition a degree in underwater soot juggling a speaking parrot and a breeding meercat enclosure to qualify for. This will never end because it does'nt have to and whilst money can be made by a suitable monopoly on exams required it will just increase until the last man standing can at least reach the light to turn it off by standing on the heap of ex IFA's beneath him/her
Posted by: Chris Geeson
exams
Chris, Can I compliment you on your fantastic analysis. Keep up the good work and I hope you pass your next underwater juggling exam
Posted by: terry arch
Food for thought
Having sought legal advice, I have been advised there are sound legal reasons that the FSA could be acting unlawfully if they introduce new rules which in effect disqualify IFAs overnight if they have not taken and passed new/additional exams.This question remains open until FSA fully approves them. Given the shambles to date, this could take some time?
Posted by: alan
FSA threats.
Alan commented about legal reasons why the FSA may be acting unlawfully in threatening to take away the livelihood of IFAs by imposing new exam requirements. My question to Alan would be, could you please ask your legal advisers a follow up question, which is 'If the FSA is eventually judged to have been behaving unlawfully in the circumstances you have referred to, would anybody who spent money on courses etc unnecessarily or invidiously, be able to sue the FSS for effectively defrauding them by making threats without any legal substance'? If 'yes', it might perhaps give the FSA pause for thought, as the place is swarming with lawyers who perhaps are hoping nobody thinks of this possibility.
Posted by: Orlando Furioso
FSA threats
With regard to Alan's comment that his legal advice is that the FSA may eventually be judged as having behaved unlawfully in the circunmstances he describes, I wonder if he could ask his legal advisers another question? The question would be, if the FSA was indeed judged to have behaved unlawfully, whether anybody who spent money on courses and exams as a result of the FSA's threats to take away their livelihood could then sue the FSA for causing them to spend their money in ways they would not have chosen if it had not been for the FSA's threats.
Posted by: Orlando Furioso
Related articles
Most Read
Audio / Visual
With the industry's biggest fund managers, IFAonline welcomes you to the media centre.
This year we have 14 awards designed to mark out the very best products in a highly competitive and innovative market. This includes three new awards for 2011 to reflect the developments in this rapidly growing market: Best Dual/Multi-Index Product, Best Structured (Oeic) Fund and Best Structured Product Provider.
Events
Poll
|
|
Job search
Ifaonlinejobs will open the right investment career path for you. Search hundreds of vacancies on www.ifaonlinejobs.co.uk now
In Focus
Viewpoints
About 2.66 million people are looking to increase the amount of money...
sponsored by
Ats all about the money
It just goes to show these exams are all about the money they produce and not the results they acheive. We all know they acheive nothing other than demonstrate some people are good at cramming. It's robbing the industry, if not in monetary terms but again of valuable time we could be spending with our clients, but then again that would be treating them fairly wouldn't it and we wouldn't want that......
Posted by: Craig