I have great sympathy for the providers of the online adviser directories who seem to have taken the brunt of the criticism from the recent Which? report into adviser qualifications.
It is not the directories that are misleading the public, but the advisers who are falsely representing themselves. Qualifications are an important characteristic of all professions – and trades come to that. Who wants a gas engineer without a current gas engineering qualification messing about with their boiler? Qualifications give the user of the service confidence that the person they are about to engage has achieved a minimum level of knowledge in a particular topic.
I assume those who are falsely representing their qualification are only too aware of the high recognition qualifications convey to the potential users of their service, so why do they fail to knuckle down and take the exams? I have listened to many pretexts for putting off getting qualifications, such as exams being expensive. But if the reward is greater business opportunities, any cost is a business investment. Time and age are often used as excuses, but that is all they are. The best one is: "I’ve got experience, why do I need to prove myself?" For someone with the knowledge and experience the exam will be a doddle because they will know the answer, what holds them back is exam technique.
In my role as chartered champion for the Personal Finance Society, I have spoken to many advisers who have failed an exam and given up. But here is the point about taking exams; failure is part of the learning process, failure creates resilience, past failure is a characteristic of a successful business.
I spoke to a young man who told me he failed AF3 four times before passing at the fifth attempt. His throwaway line was: ‘It was gruelling, failing, because I’m on the pension technical help desk.’ People never ask you how many times you have failed; they only ever ask you if you have a qualification.
One answer to this problem might be to display qualifications on the statement of professional standing, where any misrepresentation would incur a regulatory fine. In the meantime I urge our professional organisations to banish the cheats to protect the integrity of the directories and the honest advisers, never mind the general public.
Susan Hill is a chartered financial planner at Susan Hill Financial Planning
