The Retail Distribution Review and the DipFA

About the Retail Distribution Review

The Retail Distribution Review (RDR) was established by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in June 2006. It seeks to address perceived issues around insufficient consumer trust and confidence in the products and services supplied by this market; and poor standards of practice the FSA observed in its supervisory capacity in some financial firms.

Within the RDR, the FSA has set out three measures that it regards as most fundamental to delivering its desired outcomes. These are to:

• improve the clarity with which firms describe their services to consumers;
• address the potential for adviser remuneration to distort consumer outcomes; and
• increase the professional standards of investment advisers

The new framework will come into effect at the end of 2012 and will apply to all advisers in the retail investment market.

RDR and Qualifications

A major part of the RDR focuses on raising professional standards and one way the FSA has sought to achieve this is through raising the qualification standard required of financial advisers from QCF level 3 to QCF level 4. Those who wish to practice as a financial adviser from 1st January 2013 must have successfully completed an FSA approved QCF level 4 qualification to be able to do so.

In March 2010 the Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC) published the final examination standards for qualifications that meet this new benchmark requirement.

In June 2010 the revised version of the DipFA was confirmed as an approved Level 4 benchmark qualification.
CPD and Accredited Bodies

The RDR also requires that, once qualified, advisers must carry out an annual programme of 35 hours Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The CPD undertaken must largely be structured in format (e.g attending a training workshop or completing an e-learning exercise) as opposed to unstructured (e.g reading a newspaper), must be relevant to the adviser’s professional role and must be verified as such by an FSA ‘accredited body’.

These accredited bodies do not exist yet. The ifs is applying to become one and expects to be on the list of FSA approved accredited bodies due to be released in July 2011.

Qualification Top Up

In order to give advisers as much time as possible to meet the new qualifications standards mentioned above, the FSA published a list of ‘transitional’ qualifications in 2009. 
Under its ‘no regrets’ policy the FSA has ruled that anyone holding such a transitional qualification does not need to take further exams to meet the 2012 requirement but instead can fill the gaps between their qualifications and the final standards through a programme of ‘qualification top-up’ CPD.

This ‘qualification top-up’ requirement applies to anyone who registered for the DipFA with a study session start date of April 2010 or before.

In order to assist those DipFA students who need to carry out qualification top-up the ifs has developed a number of tools that are available to use free of charge.

To access the tools you need to do the following:

1) log onto www.myifslearning.com with the username and password issued to you at  the start of your studies with the ifs.

2) select ‘DipFA Qualification Top-Up’ link under the Personal links area.
If you have any further queries regarding qualification top-up or have forgotten your username and password please contact our Customer Services team on +44 (0) 1227 818609 or customerservices@ifslearning.ac.uk.