The Financial Ombudsman Service, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and professional indemnity insurance will be among the issues up for discussion at a strategy committee of the Personal Investment Management and Financial Advice Association.
The Pimfa committee will meet later this month to discuss the new trade body’s priorities for its financial adviser members.
Liz Field, chief executive of Pimfa, said the committee would also be discussing whether the long-stop should remain a priority for the trade body.
She said: “We have established a strategic forum for advice and planning which meets in two weeks’ time and that will be a mixture of firms which will decide our strategic priorities.
“They will determine what our priorities are which will then go to the board.”
Pimfa was formed in June out of a merger between the Wealth Management Association and the Association of Professional Financial Advisers.
Ms Field said she had spent the summer since the creation of Pimfa talking to advisers about their priorities.
Among the issues raised, which the committee will discuss, were the ombudsman, the senior managers regime and the FSCS levy.
Ms Field said: “There was a lot of case study evidence done by Apfa into the Financial Ombudsman Service and we will be taking that forward.
“Firms feel very strongly that Fos should follow the good practice laid down by the courts.
“That is something I think it is likely we will take forward but I don’t want to make a decision for the committee.”
Ms Field said there had been an increase in interest among advisers looking to join Pimfa since the merger.
She said: “Already on the day the merger went ahead, people were contacting us to ask if we could come and talk to them.
“The membership has gone up since then and the current count for full membership is around 2,200 and that includes firms that are part of networks.”
She said around 100 of these members were from the WMA while the rest were financial advisers, either from Apfa or new to Pimfa.
Ms Field said Pimfa is planning to reach out to advisers who are not members in a bid to recruit them.
damian.fantato@ft.com
