by Alan Hudson
RDR TIMEBOMB
As a Chartered Financial Planner I am obviously all in favour of improving the quality of advice and the knowledge of those within the profession providing it.
Does being Chartered make me a better adviser than all those without the qualification – of course not. There is no substitute for experience and diligence.
What I fail to understand is why the FSA has pursued a course of action on qualifications that is doomed to be undone. In a world where Strasbourg has ruled that convicted prisoners human rights are infringed by denying them the right to vote, it beggars belief that IFA’s with twenty or thirty years experience, no complaints and no evidence of incompetence should lose their livelihoods on the 1st of January 2013 because of a change in the rules. We have just come out of a debilitating recession when many advisers are on their knees. That won’t last however and as productivity improves and time goes by the depth of IFA’s anger will grow. How that will manifest itself I don’t know but the backlash will be huge.
Why on earth do we not have competency and advice monitored at firm level? As long as there are fully qualified individuals within the firm to take responsibility for the advice of its adviser’s common sense would suggest that the regulators responsibility to consumers is addressed.
