John Bloomfield

I spent quite a bit of time on the road today much of it catching up on the MPAF podcasts from Roger Edwards, for those not familiar Roger basically chats with a wide range of industry folk on all manner of financial services issues. Roger has a background in the life insurance industry and I think it would be fair to say that one of his 'pet issues' is the way the UK market has been driven towards a focus on lower prices and over complication of the products. Today though after hearing a few of episodes in concurrence I felt that a couple of major points were being missed possibly because they are points that only an adviser would see (or they would bother us most) and I felt the urge to write this blog post. The first issue is the difference between the cheapest product as determined by the sourcing systems and the best product as determined by research tools such as CI Expert , Roger and guest Ian Mckenna were discussing the difference between the 'economy/cheapes

Image Credit Paul Downey The British public don't exactly hold the financial services sector in high esteem these days, if they ever did. From personal experience I would say that most of the vitriol is directed at the upper echelons of the banking sector rather than at financial advisers like myself. One of the side effects of the regulatory reform that the industry has gone through is that financial adviser are now almost all members of one of the two main professional bodies. Financial advice is a constantly evolving sector where it is important that an adviser maintain his or her knowledge through continuing professional development (CPD). We have always done this but following regulatory changes we now have to have this audited and a Statement of Professional Standing (SPS) issued annually or risk de-authorisation. The most cost effective way to meet this requirement is to join a professional body and so most advisers have. And these bodies as a condition of memb