The Financial Planning Association (FPA) has gone into damage control mode after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Consumers Association released their less-than-kind results of the Financial Planners Survey last month.

Late last week FPA CEO, Ken Breakspear, said the association’s board has backed “a number of strategies” to try to overcome some of the bad publicity received in the past month.

“The FPA board actually met two days after the release of the report and gave me a mandate to improve quality standards and enforcement of the FPA code of ethics,” Mr Breakspear said.

It’s already considering making public the names of members who are censured by the association’s disciplinary board – a big move (if it goes ahead) for an association like the FPA, and symbolic of the belting financial planners have received

Other steps include a review of the FPA’s code of ethics, a “disclosure campaign”, a joint communications project with ASIC and an “initiative promoting the value of advice to consumers”. Otherwise titled, PR and plenty of it.

FPA is also planning to hold bi-annual forums in every capital city and practical compliance workshops in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.