Thirty-odd years ago I took a couple of years out of financial services to do something different.
After a spell of various jobs, I landed at what was supposedly the most prestigious fitted bedroom firm in the UK. My job involved running teams of self-employed fitters.
We did bedrooms for most of the Coronation Street cast, the Man United and Man City football teams, Lord Lichfield, and Margaret Thatcher amongst others.
One lady went nuts because the wardrobe had been fitted over a wall socket. She had been told to have a sparky move it, but had not wanted to spend the money, thinking she could cajole our bedroom fitter into doing it for free.
He had refused and she had grudgingly let him get on with the fit. It was no detriment to anyone and perfectly safe, but she insisted it wasn’t.
She said that the electricity might 'leak out of the unused socket and burn the house down'. When I explained that electricity would not leak like water just because there was no plug in the socket, she accused me of being sarcastic.
I think of that lady whenever I hear the Financial Conduct Authority going on about unused permissions. Their angle is that firms should give up any permissions they are not using.
The problem is that the way we work does not tick their normal boxes. I can see their point up to a degree. It is not a good idea for people to be doing complex work like defined benefit transfers once a blue moon. With more mundane functions though, they need to chill out.
I was recently pulled for filing a nil return in relation to claims management work. We hold claims management permissions, but we only take on clients we have pre-vetted and who have a genuine cause for complaint. We are not ambulance chasers and unlike a lot of CMCs, we do not coach pretend victims to tell lies.
Most of the claims work we do, we do pro bono or for a very nominal charge, and that is what has got me into bother with our lords and masters – they do not like the fact that we are not making much money out of it, not that there is any customer detriment.
Earlier this year I got £80,000 for a client after nearly four years of pro-bono slogging. Another business had destroyed his pension. The problem is that the way we work does not tick their normal boxes.
I phoned and explained and as usual the lady on the other end was lovely – FCA staff invariably are – but I could tell she did not really get it.
So, here is a radical idea: why doesn’t the FCA just grant claims permissions automatically to every firm so long as they do not earn more than, say, £10,000 a year from the activity per registered adviser? Then they could concentrate on regulating the CMC vampires that really need it.
Neil Liversidge, West Riding Personal Financial Solutions
