Who is backing the adviser?

In response to the question of whether financial advisers should document insistent clients, (FTAdviser, 26 November), Keith Richards, chief executive of the Personal Finance Society, is reported as saying that “the FCA is neither saying that facilitating an insistent client transaction is wrong or right”.

Thanks for that, FCA – about as equivocal a statement as it is possible to imagine. Is that supposed to reassure us? Where do you stand on signed disclaimers of liability on an adviser who facilitates a course of action contrary to his advice? The Fos commonly declares such disclaimers to have no validity and accepts a complainant’s undocumented and unprovable version of events over the adviser’s documented version of them.

All the adviser needs to state in his suitability report is that his advice is the only course of action he is prepared to facilitate and that if the client wishes to go against this, he will need to find another adviser or do it himself.

Julian Stevens

Financial Adviser,

Harvest,

Bristol