'Our profession is bickering over the wrong things'

I wonder where our profession, and ultimately the financial wellbeing of our clients, could be if we focused on what’s really important – good financial planning practices.

I was party to a debate on LinkedIn recently, and it highlighted this issue to me quite explicitly. A full afternoon was spent deliberating over the ‘restricted vs independent’ debate, and then, of course, the ‘passive vs active’ debate naturally followed.

Products are just the tools in which the house is built. What matters is the house.

There was no debate, luckily, regarding the regulator, but no doubt there will have been in a parallel forum.

I am not for one minute saying these conversations are not important. They are, indeed, major topics. It’s the sheer monopoly over airtime that these topics seem to have that I’m having trouble with.

I’m firmly of the opinion that clients can have extremely good outcomes, irrespective of the investment style or business model that their adviser works within. It’s also important to note that very poor outcomes also happen under all structures.

While we must continue to discuss their merits, we need to start using our public forums for what I believe will improve client outcomes more substantially.

This comes from working together and not fragmentally. We all ultimately do the same thing, and that’s work for the benefit of our clients.

What should we be talking about?

This list is endless but here are just a few thoughts:

• Who is or isn’t using carry forward effectively?
• How important are our qualification levels?
• With the lifetime allowance being abolished, who is contacting those benefited with two weeks left of the tax year, for last minute contributions?
• Which cash flow modelling tools are we using and why? Do we do this for everyone or at particular stages of the client journey?
• How often are we communicating with our clients and under which mediums?
• How are we planning capital gains tax for clients with respect to new legislation changes?
• How are we navigating care home fees?
• How are we using alternative investment structures?
• How are we approaching protection for wealth clients?

I could go on all day.

There is no insight for a prospective client that any planning firm is doing any of these things when they view many of the debates in public forums.

All they see is the same old arguments repeating themselves, which in my view only really account for about 10 per cent of the work we do.

Products are just the tools in which the house is built. What matters is the house. It’s time to move on.

My point being, if we give enough airtime to robust financial planning techniques and best practices, while learning from each other, then the compounded benefit of this to the profession and therefore our clients, would dwarf the nuances of investment styles or business models (many times over).

The utility of our efforts in the public domain isn’t what it could be.

This is where the real value is for those businesses and families that we all look after. This, therefore, is what we should be talking about more often, and providing a much greater stage for.

I see very little of it out there in the relevant media channels and it concerns me that the utility of our efforts in the public domain isn’t what it could be, or what it should be for that matter.

Mutually dependent

There is a real shortage of quality advice professionals, and an ever-increasing demand for advice from people all over the country. We don’t need to be competing for who has the best approach.

We’re all part of a mutually dependent ecosystem.

Co-operation, rather than competition, is the only way forward. I am quite comfortable saying that I’m not the only person who could do a good job for my clients – plenty can.

The merits of those I would put in that group, however, are not determined by their structure or proposition. It is determined by their professional and personal capabilities, knowledge, credibility and integrity.

I think the impact to a client of appropriate tax planning, financial coaching, dealing with families after a bereavement, structuring assets appropriately for care funding, developing unquestionable trust between parties, operating with integrity and cash flow planning (to name but a few), is of far greater value to client outcomes than which funds you pick or how your proposition is determined.

Co-operation, rather than competition, is the only way forward.

We should be holding each other to account, or preferably bringing our various advice communities together in an educational setting.

This would raise the profile of what good looks like (rather than mudslinging or splitting hairs). I have my own views of course, but I respect the views of others that may be different to my own.

The regulator is obviously happy with a large variety of different models, and clients up and down the country must also be happy with various models and the outcomes they are getting (or the laws of markets would render them obsolete).

We all have our perceptions and experiences on what we feel is the best way for us to run our businesses and service our clients.

If we all had the same ideas and realties, the world would be a rather bland, and clients would have fewer choices on how they approach their professional relationships. It’s a subjective endeavour.

Let’s dust off the old-fashioned business mentalities and embrace a good dose of co-operation, and we will be all the better off for it.

Adam Cockerham is a chartered financial planner based in Bath and Bradford-on-Avon

Promote Your Profession 

Join FTAdviser's latest campaign!

#PromoteYourProfession has launched to help share best practice, learn from experienced professionals, build trust among the public and bring new blood into the profession. Find out more here.