Independent Financial Advisors - IFA Bolton, UK

Despite an initial high volume of enquiries in the Autumn of 2007 it remains a fact that the Chartered Insurance Institute have, to date, only confirmed Corporate Chartered status on 50 firms (including one in Manchester, one in Bolton and four others in the North West) and including none of the so-called “mega” Brokers.

As a first step towards the professionalisation of the Financial Service sector I firmly believe that Chartered Status is of major importance. Apart from the ability to use the designation “Chartered Financial Advisers” on letterheads and other material, it is a signal to clients, prospects, markets and above all, staff, that a company is serious about its business and is firmly committed to full-bodied professionalism and all that entails in terms of competence, service and ethical practice.

We come across examples of bad practices daily, e.g. bad advice, misleading marketing, unqualified advisers dealing in a market they know very little about, and so on, perpetuated without fear of sanction. Until some form of sanction exists we cannot truly aspire to professional status.

That’s not the only reason I want to see more firms signing up to Chartered Status. With the fast changing intermediary landscape the consumer needs to have some signals about the status of his advisers. If, as seems likely, we are moving inexorably towards a regime of fees we need to adopt the operational procedures of other professions and have common job descriptions across the industry.

This seems to me to be so fundamentally obvious that I cannot understand the resistance. The learning tools are available via Broker Assess and Face-to-Face Seminars, and Corporate Chartered Status is the umbrella under which all this can take place thus providing a framework for professionalism.

If we do not take this opportunity we should cease all talk of professionalism and recognise that we are an undisciplined, largely uneducated, rag tag collection of con-artists and barrow boys, that the term Financial Adviser, has no value and we shall have the regulation we deserve.