“The pathway to becom[ing] a financial adviser is quite long and arduous once the new rules come in,” Mr Hutton said at a recent HLB Mann Judd event in Sydney.

“For the younger advisers coming through, it’s becoming a very long road. I think the university course restrictions are going to be too tight.”

HLB Mann Judd partner Jonathan Philpot agreed that the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority could have made the pathways more flexible for new entrants so that those with related degrees only had to study a few extra subjects rather than a whole degree specifically on wealth management.

“They could have made it more open so that if you do a commerce degree, you can just choose a couple of wealth management subjects and then start to specialise from there,” Mr Philpot said.

“They’re basically saying that you got to have a wealth management degree, which means that from school you need to decide that you want to become a financial adviser. Not many kids are going to decide that, particularly in our current environment.”