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We all know that the FSA is hoping to shake up the way financial advice is disseminated to the largely disenchanted public, to make it simpler and less scary for people to access good quality advice from well-qualified professionals and agree on how and by how much this service will be remunerated.

No-one in their right mind and operating within the law and good practice could fault this ambition but whether the FSA - which brought us depolarisation and the consumer-baffling jargon tied, multi-tied and whole of market a mere three years ago - can deliver and be fair to currently practising IFAs is yet to be seen.

One interesting development to date has been the tentative collaborative working of qualification providers to tackle head-on the 'alphabet soup' of financial advice qualifications. While each is closely guarding its own interests, it appears there has been a sea-change in opinion and with the retail distribution review also bringing in independent, unbiased bodies such as the Qualification and Curriculum Authority and the Financial Services Skills Council, qualification providers are less reticent to form the much fated single professional standards board.

Nick Cann, chief executive of the Institute of Financial Planning, said: "It is good to see the Qualification and Curriculum Authority coming in because that is an independent evaluation of qualifications, and the Financial Services Skills Council gives some independent validation of what we are doing. A single standards board - which is being talked about - should allow us to bring in unbiased people to look at standards and particularly discipline codes and ethics to ensure they are consistent and to oversee that they have some teeth, which brings us all together and supports what we are trying to achieve."

The Chartered Insurance Institute, which claims to have 80 per cent market share in qualification provision, recently signed the Edinburgh declaration with the Institute of Financial Planning, Securities & Investment Institute and the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland agreeing to develop a higher qualification benchmark and achieve this in an agreed timeframe.

Teresa Sayers, chief executive of the FSSC, said: "It is good to see bodies which have traditionally worked in a more competitive way banding together to improve professional standards."

Sandy Scott, group chief executive of the CII, said that with the Edinburgh declaration, "the skeleton is there, it is time to flesh it out". He said: "Our work in developing responses to the RDR has focused on ways in which the industry can work together to increase professionalism, build a more confident and trusted industry as viewed by the profession and customers, and ultimately ensure there is an expanding market and increasing numbers of consumers with access to quality advice."

The main bug-bear of many advisers is that the costs associated with gaining qualifications - from textbooks through to the exams themselves - have increased dramatically over the last few years and that all of these bodies have commercial interests.

Ian Lowes, managing director of Newcastle-based Lowes Financial Management, is concerned that the best laid plans of the FSA could, in fact, have the unintended consequence of fewer consumers receiving financial advice. He suspects that as firms struggle to recruit sufficiently qualified advisers, those that do hold coveted accreditations will be more expensive to recruit and that added cost, Mr Lowes claims, will be passed down the chain to consumers' fees, squeezing the non-high net-worth clients off IFAs' books.

Chris Cummings, director general of the Association of IIFAs, disagrees with this hypothesis and anticipates IFA firms to evolve and mimic that of other professions, such as accountants.

He said: "We are expecting to see firms which are more rounded. The consumer would pay appropriately for the service and level of adviser they see. There are different areas of advice that can be serviced by different skill sets. There are already para-planners in some IFA firms and we believe that this is only set to continue."

Accountants charge through a sliding scale, with lower fees being paid for work undertaken by junior members of the team or paralegals of law firms and higher fee levels being levied for work which only a partner could conduct.

Mr Cummings said: "We will also see firms who make use of other avenues such as telephone advice, this is much less costly than face to face. We have to look at ever-increasing options to meet the growing demand for consumers who wish to receive advice."

Cost is unsurprisingly a big concern for already over-burdened advisers feeling the economic pinch and now being told to face the additional expense inherent in further qualifications.

In fact, to complete all nine CII certificate and diploma exams costs a minimum of £1405, which includes core study texts, exam entry and PFS and CII, including London, membership. For non-members, the cost is £1486.

However, if course books, examination guides, key facts booklets, audio CDs, online tutorials and the maximum duration face-to-face revision courses were all employed by a student, the costs increase significantly to £2960 for London members and £3254 for non-members. However, shorter revision courses are available and these additional study resources are discretionary. Exam resits per unit cost £101 for members and £134 for non-members.

Steve Jenkins, financial services director of the CII, said that as a not-for-profit organisation, the CII needs to charge at the level it does to maintain high learning standards. He said: "If you compare that CII cost to paying for the first year of doing a university degree, which it is equivalent to, I would say that it bears scrutiny."

While university costs vary depending on the course taken and the university, the equivalent one year’s study of a degree at the Open University, using distance learning, costs on average £1400, which can be paid in monthly instalments and includes all learning material. Incidentally, the ifs School of Finance Certificate for Financial Advisers, which is equivalent to the CII’s certificate in Financial Planning costs £540, including 12 months registration, a learning manual and exam entry. Additional learning resources can cost from £17 to £166.

Mr Jenkins said: "The profits are reinvested for additional services, more examiners, new qualifications, and in the case of the PFS, to invest in its continuous personal developement programe. We are absolutely not profiteering off the back of the RDR. The QCA will not want any diluting of our standards at all. We need to make sure the quality and depth of our learning support does bear scrutiny from a learning perspective. That has to be invested into. Our only stakeholders are our members. The way we cost our services is designed to preserve that quality."

Another issue that has cropped up thanks to the RDR is that of the 'can’t change, won’t change' IFA. Those that may have decades of experience and run profitable and professional businesses but whom for a number of reasons - such as approaching retirement age - do not wish to go back to pouring over textbooks and pitting their wits in examination settings.

Anecdotally, this appears to be another area to experience a sea-change in opinion. With the latest RDR update published, the stance against this group has hardened, to be replaced with nonchalance.

Mr Cann said: "There is enough clarity and consistency of message from the RDR over the last two years that if some advisers have not changed their business model and reject higher qualifications then they will get what they deserve."

However, the FSA has signalled that there may be the opportunity for existing experienced advisers to demonstrate the requisite minimum levels of competence and knowledge through a rigorous on the job assessment, as an alternative to examinations, so even this perceived barrier to industry evolution may not be as fixed and cumbersome as some had feared.

Anna Lawlor is senior features writer for Financial Adviser