Your IndustryDec 12 2013

Diary of adviser: Caroline Cochrane

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We have had a very good response from clients since our celebratory reception in October. They loved the setting, with Edinburgh Castle as our backdrop, and we appreciated being able to hold it in F&C’s beautiful boardroom in the city.

As with most people, Monday is my day for setting up the rest of the week, although there is still time for some face-to-face contact with providers, so a chance for a chat and a catch-up in a local coffee shop with Morag from Zurich. We are great supporters of platforms and it is time well spent as we discuss the latest developments with regard to trustees.

Tuesday

I have a breakfast meeting with Pat, who is client welfare manager for one of the solicitor firms we deal with. She looks after the welfare of the firm’s elderly clients and they refer them to us for financial advice. Very often these are clients who have moved into residential care and we work very closely with their attorneys to ensure that their requirements are met as fully as possible. Two clients need their income requirements reviewed while another’s house sale has just completed and there are funds to be invested. I agree to prepare the relevant reports.

Wednesday

I leave the office early today to travel to a client in Angus. I was based in Dundee some years ago and still have many of my clients from that time. Ian is a vet and his firm, which until recently was a partnership, is to become incorporated. He also plans to retire in two years’ time and hence we are meeting with his accountant to discuss the most tax-efficient way of maximising his pension and selling his share of the firm on retirement. We agree to meet again before the end of the tax year.

On a separate note, we have already put in place all the business protection required for Ian and his partners – for both the partnership and the limited company – which is a requirement for their incorporation. So no need for any further discussions.

Some of the vets and their staff bring their dogs into work, so I am always greeted enthusiastically by a labrador or two when I arrive. It must be one of the perks of my job.

Thursday

I am the regional chair for Scotland for the Tenet Group. There are 16 of us and we act as a liaison between the Tenet network and its member-firms. Next week I fly down to East Midlands for our quarterly meeting, attended by Tenet’s directors and senior managers. We are issued with an agenda from Tenet but are given the opportunity to add our own points to it.

I review the correspondence which has passed between the chairs since our last meeting to ensure I am up to speed with what is concerning members at present. Professional indemnity costs and fund-switching procedure seem to be major topics. We feedback the salient points to the members in our area at the next continuing professional development event.

As a group we appreciate the opportunity to have a forum for our concerns within the industry and to be provided with the background to much of Tenet’s policy-making process.

Friday

It is the end of week and I am on the train today. I am looking back over my ‘to do’ list written on Monday. Naturally not everything has been completed but I have passed my annual specialist licence tests in long-term care and occupational pensions, agreed to make recommendations for three clients and had a lovely journey to Angus.

I leave my desk at 1pm to see an old friend for lunch today. I first met him more than 30 years ago on my first day as an adviser with Confederation Life – a career I did not expect to have after obtaining a degree in physiology and pharmacology.

Inevitably our conversation moves on to how much change there has been in our industry in the intervening years. When I began as a life underwriter, I was tasked with achieving 32 appointments a week, with no factfind or initial documents and only two funds to recommend. It was a case of woe betide you if you did not keep up your monthly cumulative targets too: miss a month and you would very likely be on your way.

Compare that with today, where only five or six meetings is the norm and how much more receptive people are to taking true, professional advice.

So as the week concluded and I sipped a large gin and tonic, I reflected on how, in some respects, the ‘good old days’ were not quite as good as we sometimes convince ourselves

Caroline Cochrane is a partner of Edinburgh-based Crandles & Co