Keith Richards: 'I will absolutely stay active in this market'

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Keith Richards: 'I will absolutely stay active in this market'
Keith Richards, outgoing chief executive of the Personal Finance Society

Outgoing Personal Finance Society chief executive Keith Richards has urged his successor to focus on helping small advice firms, as he revealed he will not be leaving the sector altogether.

Richards, who is leaving the PFS in June, told FTAdviser he hopes his successor will continue his work and ensure the PFS lobbies the government on important issues affecting advisers.

Richards said: “I would hope [my successor] gets actively involved in the continuing work of influencing policymakers, because we are a sector that is made up of largely small firms and they don’t have the resources to lobby.

"Therefore, they need strong bodies behind them that can create the resource or influence to lobby on their behalf.”

The chief executive, who has been in his role for eight years, said whoever takes his place will be coming into an organisation that is in a much better position and far more established and financially secure.

He said 'revolution' will not be needed but 'evolution' will be constant as new challenges and issues arise.

Staying in advice

Despite stepping down from his role, Richards has vowed to stay active within the advice sector and said he would continue to push for change. He will also continue in his role as chairman of the independent Financial Vulnerability Taskforce, set up by the PFS.

Richards said: “I am unlikely to go off into any other sector. My passion is here and there is still a lot more to be done. Clearly the next generation need to pick up the reigns but I will absolutely stay active in this market.”

Although he said he has “loved every minute” of his time at the PFS, Richards believes it was time for someone else to continue his work.

He said: “When you become a CEO of an organisation there is always an inevitable point of considering whether you have achieved many of the objectives you set out to achieve and whether it is the right time to step down and let someone else take it onto the next stage. 

“In my case I took over at a tense time for the advice sector, when it was going through regulatory reform with predictions of mass contraction in the market.”

Richards said he improved engagement with the PFS’s membership so much so it went from seeing 300 to 400 members a quarter to seeing over 4,000.

Richards said: “The PFS has played an important role in supporting the sector to evolve from an industry to a profession. I have been overwhelmed by the number of messages of support that I have received from members across the country since announcing I will be stepping down. 

“Whilst that’s flattering, it’s a good indicator of when you have moved the dial and helped a sector evolve. 

“There probably comes a point where it might be right for someone else to take that to another stage. Don’t get me wrong, is there a lot more to be done, absolutely, and I am passionate about seeing the profession move on to even greater things which I think will happen.”

Regrets and success

When asked whether he would do anything differently, Richards said he tended not worry about the things he could not change but instead focused on the things he could.

He said: “The past is the past and all you get looking backwards is a crick in the neck. 

“Hats off to the advice sector, it genuinely has moved on significantly and sometimes we underestimate just how much the whole sector has moved on. There will always be people at different levels and running different models but that isn’t to say one is better than the other.”

But Richards said there is still work to be done.

“I started my journey at the PFS looking at reform eight years ago and a lot of these objectives have been achieved but there is still plenty more to go,” he said.

“For me these objectives and strategies are a bit like a race without a finishing line. You never quite go through it because if you move things on and achieve the initial objectives you start to see how you can move onto the next stage.”

He added: “We tend to not recognise our own successes. This is sometimes because you don’t want to blow your own trumpet. 

“There is also the fear that the moment you positively state that we have moved on as a profession, there will be a bad news story the following day about an adviser that has done the wrong thing. But that’s a minority and we have to be brave enough to say the majority think similarly.”

Unfinished business

Richards said the biggest bit of unfinished business he was leaving behind was the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR) in the sense that it didn’t deal with a lot of issues in the industry, such as the hardening of the professional indemnity insurance market and costs of regulation, in particular the rising Financial Services Compensation Scheme levy.

To address these challenges, Richards said there needs to be a FAMR part two and the profession needs to pull together in order to get this done.

Richards said: “Many in the market were angry that FAMR didn’t deliver much and this is because it got interrupted by Brexit. FAMR drifted from its course and didn’t deliver against the objectives the government had set. 

“I would call on the sector to say one of the biggest bits of unfinished business is we need to collectively call on the government to reinstate FAMR 2. 

“I would encourage people to revisit the government’s website and look at the core objectives and aims of the review - which included probably the two biggest issues for the sector namely PI insurance and FSCS increasing levies. 

“We then have to get together and encourage the government to revisit the initiatives they put in. Then we have a much greater chance of working with policymakers to address those objectives and ultimately increase access to advice.”

Richards will leave his role on June 30 but his future plans have not yet been disclosed.

He joined the PFS in May 2013, after spending nine years at Tenet.

In 2016 he took on the additional role of managing director of engagement at the Chartered Insurance Institute following the instigation of the CII’s strategic manifesto.

amy.austin@ft.com

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