Exam focus
Professional standards for relevant providers who give personal advice to retail clients on relevant financial products.
Who this helps
- - Relevant providers
- - Persons training to become relevant providers
- - AFSL licensees supervising advisers
- - Retail advice career entrants
Why this matters
- - ASIC says professional standards apply to relevant providers and persons training to become relevant providers.
- - The framework includes qualifications, the financial adviser exam, professional year for trainees, CPD, and the Code of Ethics.
- - Professional standards analysis should be completed before choosing RG 146 or a generic adviser-training route.
Study map
Relevant provider boundary
- - Map whether the role is personal advice to retail clients on relevant financial products.
- - Separate general advice, wholesale-only advice, and advice on basic banking, general insurance, consumer credit insurance, or time-sharing products.
Standards evidence
- - Keep qualifications, exam status, professional year stage, CPD, Code of Ethics acknowledgement, authorisation, and FAR evidence together.
- - Document who at the AFS licensee owns appointment, registration, supervision, register maintenance, and adviser file review.
Licensing tie-in
- - Professional standards support individual adviser readiness, but they do not replace AFSL authorisation or responsible manager evidence.
- - AFS licensees should connect professional standards evidence to representative appointment, supervision, advice controls, and public register accuracy.
- - A retail advice business should show how it prevents staff from moving into relevant-provider activity before the required standards route is ready.
Booking and sponsorship
- - Use ASIC's professional standards and financial adviser exam pages for current official context.
- - Use ASIC Connect and FAR materials for appointment and registration workflow checks.
- - Keep any Treasury qualification assessment, exam booking, professional year, CPD, and Code of Ethics evidence in the same adviser file.
Verify before studying
- - Whether the person is a relevant provider, provisional relevant provider, existing provider, time-share adviser, or outside those definitions.
- - Whether the person will give retail personal advice or only wholesale, general, support, or non-relevant-product advice.
- - Whether the licensee has updated FAR information and assigned supervision for the proposed products.
Common mistakes
- - Using RG 146 training for a relevant provider path.
- - Treating an exam pass as the whole professional standards framework.
- - Forgetting FAR appointment, registration, maintenance, or product-scope details.
- - Mixing responsible manager competence evidence into the adviser file without a separate RG 105 map.
Disclaimer
Information on LicenseCompare is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, regulatory, financial, tax, investment, or professional advice. Licensing requirements depend on facts and change over time. Always consult official regulator materials and qualified professional advisers.