Raising the status of financial advisers to a professional standing is taking longer than expected, but Mitre Wealth Management‘s Stephen O’Connor knew it wouldn’t be as easy “as flicking a switch”.
Speaking to David Kneebone in a Financial Advice NZ This is Your Story programme (see below), O’Connor talked about his career and expectation that the Level 5 qualification financial advisers need will be raised to a university degree requirement.
“When I look back to the early 2000s…I thought the professionalisation of financial advice would happen in the next 10 or 20 years,” he said.
“So for me it’s been a real slow grind – and it probably had to happen at that pace – because it is not as easy as flicking a switch and saying ‘everybody now has to be professional’.
“We are getting there slowly, and that’s one of the reasons I got involved with professional bodies, I want to see the professionalisation of financial advice. That’s my goal.”
O’Connor, who is Principal at Mitre Wealth Management and a board member at Financial Advice NZ, wants advisers to be recognised as professionals.
“We have a way to go to get there,” he told Kneebone. “We are still moving down that track.
“The regulations will evolve, and we will get to a point where the requirement of a Level 5 certificate will move to a degree over time, as it has in Australia and other jurisdictions.”
O’Connor says professional bodies, such as Financial Advice NZ, have a “…huge part to play”, but says they can only be effective if financial advisers belong and contribute to them.
“It is not always about what the organisation can do for you,” he says. “It’s about what members can do to help the professional body.”