Intermediary trade body to restructure

The restructure was first exclusively revealed in Money Management's July edition, which was published on FT Adviser.com today (19 June).

Chris Cummings, director general of AMI, told Money Management a subsidiary of the Association of Independent Financial Advisers (AIFA), gave the biggest indication yet that Richard Farr could shortly vacate his post as director of AMI.

He said, “Richard has been a terrific asset to AMI. We are giving lots of thought about the structure of AMI and that will mean redeploying staff in certain areas. One of the things that anyone in the mortgage business can take for granted is that people come and go. We might end up with a different team.”

Cummings said that the organisation has been managing its finances carefully and has continued to maintain its successful not-for-profit strategy but, to continue to do this, some tough decisions will need to be made.

The recent AMI dinner attracted only one sponsor that had booked 12 months ago. Abbey paid £40,000 to sponsor the event at the Café Royal, Regent Street.

Chris Cummings confirmed his salary as £148,000 for the whole of last year but declined to disclose the individual salaries of Richard Farr, director of AMI and Robert Sinclair, director of the Association of Finance Brokers (AFB). Cummings’ salary is paid from all three trade bodies within the AIFA group.

Last month, the group said that it was allocating resources for a major consumer campaign and also needed to find funding for the appointment of a new policy director.

It has had to factor these costs in to the accounts for the coming year. The AIFA director general acknowledged that the market is going through an extremely difficult patch and that the entire sector is currently looking to cut costs but stressed that the AMI’s finances remain in good health overall.

A final decision on the future structure of the trade body is expected to be announced around the 28 June. A number of prominent industry figures feature on the AMI board including Stephen Smith, housing director at Legal & General, compliance expert Bill Warren and Sally Laker, managing director of Mortgage Intelligence.

joe.mcgrath@ft.com