What it is
The Financial Viability Risk Assessment asks one question with many sub-clauses: can this entity survive long enough to serve its students properly? A provider that fails financially mid-course strands enrolled students, and the regulator's job is to see that risk before it happens.
You will be asked for projections — revenue, costs, cash flow — with the assumptions behind them, evidence of the capital available to the entity, and a business plan that connects the numbers to the scope you chose at Stage 2. The assessment is done by people who read hundreds of these. Optimism is not persuasive; arithmetic is.
The structural trap for new providers is the revenue gap. Preparation takes months, assessment takes months more, and enrolments build slowly after that — while rent, salaries, systems and insurances are paid from day one. The FVRA probes exactly that gap.
What ASQA wants to see
- Projections built from evidenced assumptions: enrolment numbers traceable to the demand work you did at Stage 2, prices tested against the market, costs that include everything.
- Demonstrated access to funds — committed capital, not a relative's verbal promise — sufficient to operate through a slow start.
- Costs that include the unglamorous lines: premises, insurances, a student management system, trainer salaries before revenue, resource licensing, professional fees.
- A business plan where the words and the numbers agree with each other and with the rest of the application.
What goes wrong
- The hockey stick. Forty students in month three, from a provider with no brand, no track record and no sales channel.
- The missing costs. Projections with no student management system, no insurance, no validation costs, no salaries until “the revenue arrives”.
- Capital theatre. A balance shown to exist for the application, not committed to the venture.
- Contradictions. A business plan promising small-group face-to-face delivery while the projections assume high-volume online enrolments.
Indicative effort
Typically 3–4 weeks working alongside your accountant: building projections, documenting assumptions, and stress-testing the capital position against a slow first year.
Can we help?
FVRA preparation — $3,900
Our FVRA preparation package: the workbook completed properly, projections built on defensible assumptions, and the capital story documented. We work with your accountant, not instead of one — and we do not certify accounts or provide financial advice.