A group of financial advisers has launched a business designed to provide a full service auto-enrolment compliance solution to financial advisers and planners.
The Auto Enrolment Advisory Group was launched yesterday (28 October) by Matt Walne, director of Santorini Financial Planning; Chris Daems, director of Principal Financial Solutions; Ian Highton of Essential Financial Advisers and Bridget Greenwood, former adviser and president of Financial Social Media UK.
Mr Daems said that service is designed to ensure advisers maintain and build on “excellent relationships”with their corporate and business owner clients, deal profitably with auto enrolment and have access to experts who fully understand (and have experience of dealing with) the challenges advisers face when working with corporate clients generally and auto enrolment specifically.
He said: “One of the largest misconceptions about auto enrolment is that it’s all about pensions. It’s actually far more about systems and project management. “
“Whilst financial advisers and planners are fantastic at building relationships and using their technical expertise to help develop solutions for their clients the feedback we have received is that auto enrolment requires a whole new set of processes and systems to ensure the adviser can help both their corporate and business owner clients with this rigorous new legislation.”
Mr Daems added that many advisers struggle with knowing how to profitably deal with auto-enrolment and in a process driven and systemised fashion.
He said: “That’s where this solution helps. Over the next 10 months all firms with 62 to 799 employees will have reached their staging date, highlighting the very small window of opportunity for advisers. Especially when you consider it takes on average a minimum of six months from initial agreement to ensuring a firm is compliant.
“Auto enrolment is new for everyone, so there aren’t established procedures readily available for advisers to follow. We have built a process driven proposition which enables advisers to get involved in this market with confidence, and it’s our vision to see as many advisers as possible take a share of this market.”
