Don’t ignore female clients
Following your article ‘IFAs risk losing female clients after death of their partner’ (Aug 25).
We have never had this problem. Partly because when a client is bereaved, we do all we humanly can in terms of minimising bureaucracy, expediting payments, notifying providers and the like.
It’s the same with terminal illness claims. On occasion I’ve personally visited doctors to pick up signed claim forms.
I suspect the main reason, however, was one voiced by the woman in the first couple ever to join our company as investment clients when we set up in 2004.
They were clients of my former employer. When I let them know I’d be leaving to set up my own business, straight away she said “we want to stay with you”.
She said I spoke to her as well as her husband, but that my former employer never did.
It was true. I’d been in client meetings with my old boss who routinely addressed only the man in the partnership, as if he were the only client, even when it was his wife’s own pension or investment that was being discussed.
Sixteen years on they’re still with us, both in their mid-late 70s now.
The lesson is simple: If you ignore the lady, she’ll walk. And who can blame her?
Neil Liversidge
West Riding Personal Finance Solutions
Exam errors
Regarding your article ‘CII offers free re-sit to all candidates who failed in July’ (Aug 27).
I am a candidate of CII Level 4 Diploma in Regulated Financial Services.
I took the remote exams offered by CII through a third-party provider called PSI and experienced both technical glitches on July 6 and August 21, which were unforgettable.
Unfortunately I failed my exam on July 6.
The CII announced it would be offering free re-sits to all candidates who failed in July.
In their email, it says: “A member of our customer service team will call you by close of business on September 11 to discuss your free-of-charge October re-sit, and free virtual revision course available in September or October.”
Upon receipt of the email, I was wondering why CII would prefer calling every single candidate to book the re-sit rather than communicating via email about how to book online since they have an online booking system which works?
Sadly, when a member of CII customer service team called me this morning, I missed the call. CII left me a voice message saying they would try to call me again in the next few days or I could call them back.
I decided to call them back at the number mentioned in the voice message. On the call, I was told by the robot that all members of the customer service team were engaged and the waiting time for me to talk to the next available member was 29 minutes.
I decided to wait on the line as the indicated waiting time was much shorter than my previous calls to CII during technical glitches in July and August.
However, after listening to the music (which is now stuck in my head) and the constant machine-generated apologies for keeping me waiting, I realised it was pretty much a waste of my life, so I hung up.
The process of booking a re-sit seems to be very straightforward: CII issues a voucher online to all candidates, then candidates use the voucher to book the re-sit via CII’s online booking system. Done.
I really don’t know what they have to discuss with me via a phone call.
I guess in the next few days I will have to carry my mobile phone everywhere I go and pick up their call by interrupting whatever I will be doing at that moment. Sounds exciting!
Nevertheless, I do hope that my re-sit can be booked and confirmed soon. I am more keen than ever to work hard on my R06 exam not only to pass it but also to end my CII saga.
Name and address supplied
Complaints debacle
Following your article ‘MPs face calls to suspend “scandalous” FCA consultation’ (Sep 9).
On June 2 2020 Charles Randell, chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority, made the following statement in a letter to the chairman of the Treasury Committee, saying: “I would like to start by confirming that we accept the [Complaints] Commissioner’s criticism raised in the above case and the wider comments he has made in his response to you around the levels of service and quality of complaints handling.
“While the majority of complainants do receive timely and adequate responses to their complaints, it is unacceptable that some complainants have experienced significant delays in the handling of their complaints or received inadequate responses.
“We have acknowledged that significant and prompt improvement is necessary to address this, and ensure this situation does not recur.”
Yet to read the consultation document on the complaints scheme issued a month later you would have no sense of a problem whatsoever.
If the chairman of a listed company had made such a statement and then issued a prospectus a month later that ignored it in such a way, there would be serious comment and possibly a Stock Exchange investigation.
Yet this is the other world of the FCA.
The members of the Treasury Committee have not helped with these issues.
When they ‘interviewed’ the prospective head of the FCA, Nikhil Rathi, in July for his confirmation hearing not a single question on complaints was raised.
This was despite a mass of evidence on the subject, including the above letter.
It will be interesting to see what the new Complaints Commissioner has to say, but I am not holding my breath.
Nick Burton
Retired from industry
