Kepa held its 2019 Conference ‘Licence to Fly’ on 24 October where CEO, Brendon Neal, opened by reiterating the company’s value proposition and achievements in the past year.
He reminded advisers that they would have two options with Kepa, either to:
- Operate under the Kepa FAP Licence; or
- Operate under their own FAP but have outsourced services provided via Kepa’s ‘Adviser Hub’
“This allows advisers the choice of business model that best suits their resources, skills and aspirations,” he said.
Neal reflected on Kepa’s programme of change and detailed some their achievements over the last 12 months; which included:
- Launching Kepa General
- Appointing Paula Damen as full time training manager facilitating NZCFS (L5) who had conducted classroom workshops with over 100 advisers so far
- All frontline staff upskilling having completed L5 and the FAP Compliance Officer course through Strategi
- A series of Fit4Licence Roadshows in February and August with supporting handbooks and resources
- Employing specialist licensing and compliance capability to support advisers
In addition he confirmed that Kepa was about to launch a new learning management system (Kepa Learn) which will include ongoing CPD, online modules, induction training and more.
Kepa is also building its full licence capabilities including compliance assurance programme, new adviser agreements, technology and onboarding procedures.
Neal also had a word of caution to attendees about the level of legislation and change impacting the sector all at once.
“Kepa is concerned that advisers and groups don’t have the complete picture as relates to full licencing and that decisions are having to be contemplated not just as relates to FSLAA but also now alongside the potential impacts of new conduct obligations, putting downward pressure on revenues whilst operating costs are going up,” he said.
Among the high-calibre key note speakers at the Conference, was New Zealand Wealth Advisory co-founder, Scott Fitzpatrick CFP, who spoke on how to become a lead adviser sitting on the ‘family board’ and with the advisers in attendance, workshopped new ways of creating client value and how to introduce fees for service into their businesses.
The training programs were initially announced in June (see: New Kepa Adviser Training Initiative…).
The first Lead Adviser Training two-day workshops are being held in Queenstown on the 21-22 November which Neal confirmed are now fully booked. The next workshops are scheduled for 5-6 December.
For more details, interested advisers can contact Kepa or info@mynzwa.co.nz