Your IndustryMay 2 2013

Lead generation boss vows to fix delays for advisers

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Advisers such as Andy Smith, an IFA for Surrey-based Totara Financial Services, and Hertfordshire-based Harvey Mozer, a partner of True Potential, claimed they have been seeking refunds and explanations from London-based Appointment Gen as to why leads have dried up.

Mr Mozer said he had paid £1,750 in October for 10 leads, but only received two in January.

He said: “I asked for a refund but cannot get one and have not had any leads in four months. I now give all lead companies a grilling before I use them.”

Mr Smith claimed he had paid upfront for 25 pension leads in September 2012, but had only received 11 by the end of October.

He said: “I am owed 14 appointments. I had done business with Appointment-Gen in the past and received leads, but now I have not got the business and I cannot get a refund.”

He also questioned why the company director Michael Browne had set up another lead generation firm, Adviser Prospects, while advisers from Appointment-Gen, set up in 2011, were owed money.

However, Mr Browne, director of Appointment-Gen, pledged to provide the leads and said there had been problems with delivering business since the beginning of 2013.

He said: “Within all the contracts there is no time of delivery. We did come into some difficulties at the beginning of the year that held things up.

“I am sorry there have been delays. We are doing as much as we can to speed up the delivery times, but we have to do it on a sustainable basis.”

He said he recognised people were frustrated but said advisory firms were seeing leads come through, of which 80 per cent convert into business. Mr Browne added that advisers also had to make clear when they were available for appointments. He said he hoped to get things resolved within two months.

Mr Browne is also director of a separate lead generation business set up on Companies House in February 2013 called Adviser Prospects. He said this is a completely separate entity that generates business on a different model, where advisers pay after an appointment.

He said that the Appointment-Gen ethos of paying upfront had worked for the past two years but was now dead. He said Appointment-Gen stopped taking new business six months ago to concentrate on pushing leads through.