So, the FPA has announced big changes to their membership structure and professional standards and I have to say this is good start to the reforms that have been needed for quite some time. My first response is bring it on – this is way overdue! I’ve long nagged the organisation and anyone else who would listen that the evolution of FPA was incomplete – it effectively stalled in the early part of this decade but thankfully the announcements re-start that process.
If the proposals get up then from July 2013 new members will only be accepted if they have an approved degree or higher qualification. The proposals also look to establish a ‘professional year’ program of supervision and as one who proposed this in 1997 – during my work on the then FPA’s ‘Towards Professionalism Taskforce’ – I’m glad it’s finally being recommended to members.
The other perhaps more controversial proposal is to discontinue to the ‘Principal Member’ category which will more fully align the association as a practitioner focused. This is not semantics – a key weakness of FPA since its 1992 birth has been the perception that outwardly FPA is all about professional standards but inwardly it’s all about what’s best for members and licensees’ commercial interest. For many perception is reality and when the media force feeds such perceptions to the community it’s not rocket science to work out what the community will think of financial planners generally and the association.
The ultimate destination for FPA is to become a standards setting body – not a hybrid of member services and professional standards setter. A pure standards setter will implement and monitor professional standards expected of members who are granted the right to use professional designations such as CFP. Practitioners who breach such standards are dealt with by various disciplinary procedures including, ultimately, dismissal, and the integrity of the organisation and the standards it represents are much better protected.
As for an abolition of the Principal Member category, such former FPA members would still be able to insist that their advisers comply with FPA professional standards and in terms of the ‘member services’ issue for such businesses, for the big end of town their natural home is probably more closely linked to the Financial Services Council (formerly IFSA). It’s the so-called ‘small’ Principal Members which might suffer most but I have great confidence that the entrepreneurial spirit embedded in such businesses will see opportunities to not only perhaps gather under another purely member services ‘association’ type structure but also to find ways to refresh their commitment to the highest professional standards.
The proposed changes are a good start and in time should arrest the lamentable slide in the otherwise good name of the association in the industry.