McFSSC

Sounds grand, doesn’t it, but in fact those designatory letters signified very little. For those of you who’ve forgotten, or never knew anyway, ALIA stood for Associate of the Life Insurance Association and meant that that the holder had been a member of the LIA for five years and had relevant industry experience; FLIA was the same, but applied after 10 years. The point I made at the talk was that advisers/reps using these letters were conveying a false impression to clients that the holders were better qualified than was actually the case, and they should cease immediately.

We have come a very long way since then, of course, and we now have a putative profession that is better qualified than it has ever been. There are now a variety of excellent qualifications available offering designatory letters that genuinely indicate that holders are qualified to give first class advice. As part of this progress, last year the RDR proposed that minimum entry level qualifications for financial advisers be raised from Level 3 to Level 4 by 2010 for new advisers, and 2012 for existing advisers.

The Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC) has been responsible for improving skills in financial services, but has now been threatened with closure, from this Autumn, unless it is able to garner support of its sector.

The FSSC has had an uphill struggle to establish itself as an agency that can be responsible for improving skills in financial services, not helped by the recent confusion it inadvertently created over what will and will not be admissible towards a Level 4 qualification. In a statement it issued on 5 February 2009 it stated that until the new standards for qualifications are published, “advisers may wish to study for Level 4 or

higher qualifications in readiness for the outcomes of the RDR,” but there was “no guarantee how near or far from the new requirements a qualification will be”.

Eh? Frankly I’ve come across less woolly statements from a bleating sheep. I think what they are trying to say is, go ahead and study for more qualifications, but we will have to wait until the new standards for Level 4 have been defined before we know whether such extra qualifications will be Level 4 standard or not, even though FSSC has already set a deadline for the first tranche to come on stream from 2010.

I was further confused by the FSSC’s robust defence of its performance to date in citing for support the very National Audit Office report into its operations that led to the licence not being renewed in the first place. The FSSC statement said that the NAO report “identified no critical failures which indicate that the FSSC cannot continue to be effective” in its work. Having read the report myself, it is clear that the FSSC and the NAO have different interpretations of what constitutes a failure.

All 25 Sector Skills Councils are currently going through a relicensing assessment by the Commission for Employment Skills (CES) and the FSSC is the only one to be turned down so far.

At about the same time the FSSC was having its problems, another training course offered by a large employer became one of the UK’s first employers to win the power to award its own nationally recognised qualifications. Following that success the company plans to go on and offer a postgraduate degree with the awarding of a PhD to successful candidates.

The name of this employer?

McDonald’s. Here’s a thought. If the FSSC’s licence is revoked in the Autumn, perhaps the CES should ask McDonald’s to run it?

- Janet Walford OBE