- The corporate regulator has finally released the long-awaited dates for the financial adviser exam sittings in 2023. With the industry seeing further departures, the exam remains the major hurdle between new advisers joining the industry. According to the announcement the four sittings for 2023 will be on 16 February, 11 May, 10 August and 9 November, with registrations closing around three weeks before each date.?
- ASX-listed licensee and AFSL support business Diverger (ASX: DVR) this week announced the acquisition of AFSL Compliance. The group offers support to advice and accounting firms that hold their own AFSLs or are looking to register their businesses to do so. The deal is reported to have come at a cost of $1.37 million and will expand Diverger’s client base by a further 160 self-licensed advice firms while expanding their skill set and service offering.?
- ASIC’s busy finish to the year continued this week with the regulator flagging another five funds for concerns about the marketing of their strategies. The regulator is pressuring responsible entities, being those that monitor the underlying funds, to do more to ‘meaningfully oversee’ the way in which said funds are being marketed to investors. Among those highlighted were the Dent Sector Fund and Maxiron Monthly Income Trust.?
- It may well be the beginning of a new bull market, with two key announcements this week triggering a rally in sharemarkets across the world. The first was a significant slowdown in inflation in Australia, to 6.9 per cent, which was well below the 7.6 per cent predicted by the experts. What followed was a speech by Fed chair Jerome Powell who suggested that the pace of US rate hikes may slow as the board seeks to assess the impact of the aggressive policy action that has already been implemented. Those pricing in a continuation of current policies were quickly caught off guard, triggering the rally.?
- The Advisers Association (TAA), has called for more stringent education requirements for those offering solely general advice. Responding to the Quality of Advice review and the likelihood that a broader range of providers will be authorised to give ‘simple’ advice, they suggest the RG146 education requirements be expanded, as those for full financial advisers have been.?They said “RG146 was an accreditation for its time. Following QAR, we will move into a new era for financial advice, an era of growing consumer needs and greater consumer expectations. To meet these needs and expectations, we believe RG146 should be upgraded with AQF7 or AQF8 level assessed topics.”
