Because most of the professional bodies aligned renewing your SPS with your membership renewal date some advisers will not be aware that just renewing your membership does not automatically correlate with getting a new SPS.
Advisers have to apply for their new SPS.
And the rules are perfectly clear. The independent verification – that an adviser has met the relevant qualification requirements – must be obtained by a firm:
(1) in respect of a competent retail investment adviser who began to carry on the activity of a retail investment adviser on or before 31 December 2012, within 60 days of that date and of the anniversary of that date thereafter;
(2) in respect of a retail investment adviser who began to carry on the activity of a retail investment adviser on or after 1 January 2013, within 60 days of the date on which the retail investment adviser was assessed as competent as a retail investment adviser and of the anniversary of that date thereafter.
So, you have 60 days to obtain your SPS, either on the first occasion or on renewal.
Professional bodies cannot and will not issue an SPS if you do not have a live individual reference number. If you are new to advising you cannot get your SPS having passed the exams but in advance of being authorised by a specific firm.
Professional bodies cannot and will not issue an SPS if you do not have a live individual reference number.Which leads me to ask why, when authorising an individual new to the world of advice, we are once again subjected to the intimidating “you are in breach of the rules” emails because the FCA systems throw up a warning that our new adviser does not have a valid SPS.
If this warning emerged in accordance with the FCA’s own rules, when there was no SPS registered within 60 days of its authorisation, I would have to find another subject for this column. But when the threatening letters come in the same week that the person concerned received their authorisation when no one – not the adviser, not the professional body, not the firm – is in breach of any rules at all, I am forced to observe that the regulator is getting something very simple very badly wrong.
Most advisers I know are broadly supportive of positive and useful regulation, but overbearing and intimidating regulation when there is no rule breach is completely and utterly counter-productive.
Gill Cardy is network development director of ValidPath
