Following, no doubt, many hours of meetings and consultations, our regulator is introducing new rules ’to shift behaviour and focus’. In future we’ll have to ‘deliver good outcomes for customers, consider their needs and learn from awareness of what customers experience’. A couple of things here? Would you deal with an adviser who didn’t do any of the above? Surely market forces would quickly sort them out. And, yes, we need laws to say it’s illegal to murder or beat up others. But do we also need rules making it mandatory to be jolly nice at all times? Well, in some cases, yes, but I do think this takes stating the bleedin’ obvious to a new level…
“Letter of authority: Why now is the right time for change”
This may sound like a non-issue from outside the world-of-financial-advice bubble. It is the bain, however, of the daily working lives of many of us, particularly of those paid by we advisers to do the dirty work of dealing with the many providers with whom we have to work.