Your IndustryApr 1 2015

Why should I pay for others’ irresponsibility?

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Why should I pay for others’ irresponsibility?

I am a big fan of Marco Pierre White, he has a great philosophy on cooking – keep it simple, use good ingredients and offer top service. Most financial advisers could and should follow the same principles.

Simple products with a focus on the clients goals and objectives is a pretty formidable combination, enhance with simple cashflow modelling to ensure the plan will work and you’re onto offering any client real value, with limited risk.

After 15 years in the industry and having never sold a self-invested personal pension (Sipp), it’s somewhat grating to get an email from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) requesting payment of £74.00. For what exactly? It would appear to pay for those reckless, commission-chasing advisers who deemed it vital to sell high risk products for short term gain.

In my case, its not the end of the world in terms of the interim levy affecting my business. Take note, we’re in a time of massive change, clients are now more ‘fee savvy’ and financial firms are under pressure to provide real value with a definite link to costs, one of the more favourable outcomes of the retail distribution review.

Twitter has been busy with Martin Bamford of Informed Choice and Steve Martin who owns Smart Financial Planning quoting £3,800 and £2,500 respectively. A tidy sum that offers no value to both firms (it is just a cost) to support buffoons that are probably now out of the business and serving fries at the local chicken parlour.

Time for a change, if you sell high risk products now, then you should be paying into a levy now now to pay for future problems and not expect the bill to be picked up buy customer focused firms who like Mr White, would rather keep it simple.

Richard Bishop is a financial adviser.