PosSol partners' commission delayed due to business check backlog

Some partners at Positive Solutions are being made to wait for commission payments as the company works to clear a business checking backlog.

The national IFA introduced a new training and competence framework at the beginning of the year, which includes fresh business checking requirements for both new and existing practitioners.

It says the arrival of about 200 partners in 2010 so far and an upturn in business activity has left it with a backlog of case checks, delaying the payment of commission in some cases.

Positive Solutions has hired an interim compliance and risk director, Dawn Batchelor, in a bid to clear what was, at one stage, a month-long backlog. It currently stands at just under three weeks.

Company CEO Jim Reeve says: "There have been some [commission delays] but the impact on partner cash flows has been minimal."

Reeve says the compliance team, which has been working weekends in a bid to clear the backlog, is also giving priority to those cases already submitted to the provider and where the commission is imminent.

"Every advisory business, unless they have been asleep for the last 18 months, will know that the [compliance] bar has been raised," Reeve adds.

"We saw what was going on at other companies and we decided our training and competence scheme needed a revisit. It is the right thing to do to protect our advisers and clients."

The framework outlines new rules for advisers at Positive Solutions.

Existing partners are now placed in one of three categories - low, medium or high risk - which determine the amount of business checked and the frequency of assessment.

Factors including upheld complaints, case count and total commission are used to categorise partners. All new joiners are subject to 100% business checking for up to the first 26 weeks.

The national IFA recently told partners it was upping retention thresholds by £5,000 and increasing the minimum income requirement from £20,000 to £25,000 in an effort to offset rising regulatory costs.