The minimum level of education to be a financial planner in Australia is woefully inadequate. Two or three modules of a couple of days each will do it – about as long as it takes to learn how to make a decent cup of coffee. Unbelievably, the authorities sat on their hands for years and did nothing to raise the standard. It would be truly laughable if it weren't for the fact that ordinary people are fronting up for advice on their life savings.

Mercifully, the industry is in for a big shake-up. Let's hope the bar is raised much higher. There's nothing quite like a parliamentary inquiry to quickly air issues. And that is what is happening with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, which is looking into financial planning and the role of lenders in the collapse of investments that have cost retirees dearly. It has received submissions pointing out that if planners are to be recognised as fully fledged professionals, they are going to have to have more pieces of paper to their name.

First, we had the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's (ASIC) submission bombshell that it wants planners to give up their commissions and asset-based fees in favour of hourly fees and that there needs to be a legal obligation for planners to act in the best interests of their clients.

The Financial Planning Association (FPA) agrees with most of ASIC's recommendations. Despite the FPA's best efforts, it has been struggling to lift the professionalism of the industry. Over the years, it has revised its professional codes and best-practice guidelines in an effort to better manage the gaping cracks left open, in large part, by ASIC's failure to enforce standards and rid the industry of bad apples.

The FPA cannot do the job alone. It does not have the backing in law or regulation that some other professional associations have to deal effectively with bad apples and only two-thirds of planners are FPA members anyway.

The FPA is embracing the opportunity to restructure the industry to help ensure better consumer protections. It wants the term "financial planner" enshrined in law or regulation with higher standards of competency, professional commitment and fiduciary obligation. It wants to improve the licensing, monitoring and supervision of Australian Financial Services licence holders. That's all well and good but the section on education of planners in the FPA's submission does not go far enough.

It takes a couple of weeks to qualify for Regulatory Guide 146, which governs minimum training standards for planners. (ASIC says in its submission to the inquiry that it will review Regulatory Guide 146).

To be a member of the FPA, planners must have higher educational attainments than Regulatory Guide 146 but not that much higher. To be an FPA associate financial planner, the planner must hold a diploma of financial services, which is a qualification of considerably lower educational attainment than an undergraduate university degree. The FPA is promoting its Certified Financial Planner certification, which requires an undergraduate degree and a good amount of professional experience, among other things. But membership of the FPA is not compulsory for planners.

The FPA recommends that one way to lift standards across the industry would be to require mandatory membership of the FPA and for the FPA to be a co-regulator of the financial planning industry with ASIC. That is not likely to happen.

There is likely to be resistance to any push for a meaningful increase in educational attainment for planners from the big end of town. Perhaps the banks, for example, like it just the way it is. It makes it easy for them to promote one of their staff from the branch counter to para-planning role without significant training costs. The banks would argue that they have the systems in place so that junior planners are supervised closely and watched over. But it is not good enough.

University-degree level should be the minimum educational attainment. The complexity in financial products and how they impact on tax and social security demands no less.