The Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia) is preparing an expansion of its Financial Services Professional credential (FSP) in to the sector of business banking.

"We've gone through the process of putting together a steering council on this first round, and we have NAB and Westpac, Suncorp, Bank of Queensland and Bendigo Bank and Bank SA participating," Finsia chief executive Russell Thomas said.

"They have each put together a whole series of interviewees throughout the organisation, from group executive level all the way to HR and line roles to build the competency framework," Thomas said.

"They are due to report next month to finalise the competency framework and then to put candidates through the program. We expect that the first round will be 30 - 50 candidates," Thomas said.

The FSP program is based on mentoring of candidates by industry peers and is designed to help candidates reach higher levels of professionalism.

The program started earlier this year with a private banking trajectory that included 15 candidates.

"It brings together financial planning and financial advice in a banking environment. We consider it a defined space where we can work with the larger financial service employers to bring that model to fruition," Thomas said.
 
"The first cohort of private banking candidates are going through the program, and a second batch is due to start next month. [The program] has support from ANZ, NAB, Westpac, Macquarie and a couple of the smaller banks in private banking," he said.

Finsia has expressed its support for the government's proposals to raised the education standards as set out in ASIC's consultation paper 153 (CP 153), but Thomas said the benchmark needed to be set significantly higher than is currently required under regulatory guide 146 (RG 146).

Thomas argued that the new standards should at least be an advanced diploma level and those who want to sit the licensing exam proposed in CP 153 should have a relevant undergraduate degree.

"We certainly do not want a repeat of the last RG 146 roll-out, which led to a lowering of standards across the industry, as education providers competed with each other to meet what essentially was a compliance tick," he said.

"We see this as and recognise that ASIC is resetting its relationship with professional industry bodies, so for Finsia we've heard that call and are prepared to go on that journey with the regulator."

"We believe there is a greater role for bodies like ourselves to have the ethics framework and disciplinary framework in place, to discuss areas where members don't meet that standard, but also to have a series of career validation points that contribute to the overall discussion of professionalism in the industry," he said.