Like it or not if you plan to be a practicing Financial Adviser in Australia you now need to sit for AND pass the FASEA exam and we have been doing our homework for you.
Over the last few months we have been speaking to lots of Advisers about their plans to pass the FASEA exam. We have also taken the chance to talk with quite a few Advisers who have already sat for the exam.
In addition we have been looking at the options for getting help to study for and pass the exam with the least amount of interruption as possible.
So what is the exam like? Well it seems to me to be primarily an exam to test you on the law and how it sees and relates to Financial Advice… at least the regulated parts that is. (I will be talking a lot more about the huge push we are seeing and supporting to non-regulated Advice in upcoming weeks).
Just because you are an ethical, honest and experienced Financial Adviser does not mean you are going to be able to easily pass this exam. This seems to me to be like the law subjects I did so long ago at University.
In other words you are going to want to have awesome notes and will actually need to do some study to see this through.
I can also tell you that I wouldn’t study for this on my own… the suggested reading that you get for this is thousands of pages long.
But it’s open book I hear you say? Actually it’s more like ‘open computer’, which is nothing like the open book exams I did in my day, where you could ‘post it note’ all of the relevant sections, cases and examples.
So that means you can search through all of the reading on the computer you will be using to complete the exam. However, without having the ability to spend time getting used to the system and indexing it, we wouldn’t suggest relying on the open book nature very heavily if at all.
The exam is 3.5 hours in length which includes 15 minutes of reading time and all existing Advisers must pass the exam by Jan 2021.
Ok, so life for most Advisers is pretty busy and if you are like me it’s been a while since doing any formal study. In my thinking the question is ‘how do I easily pass this with the least amount of study required?’.
So I have also been looking for the best support option that would suit my exam philosophy of ‘get the best notes and tutor and study fast and effectively’.
After all, I’m sure you would much rather be doing the business of actually helping your clients lead better lives.
There are plenty of options out there, from Licensee support options to Kaplan. However my personal pick of the bunch is https://bluepath.com.au
(Please note I take no incentives for my recommendations, I’m just sharing what I have found).
I know the people involved and not only are they great people, they are also the best possible team for making your exam study super easy in my opinion.
For that reason I have filmed a full interview with the founders of Bluepath Brook & Roger Patterson. Not only do I grill Brook on the exam (she has already sat it), I talk about what the exam is like and the best way to study for it.
This video is a must watch for all Advisers who are yet to sit the FASEA exam in my opinion. My recommendation is to book an hour and put this in your calendar!
Bluepath is offering, study notes and a one day workshop as well as pre-exam sessions. To me the value for what they are doing is a complete NO-BRAINER.
Find the right people – get help – pass exam – get on with business.
I suggest doing the exam sooner rather than later, so that you can move forward without it in the back of your mind.