What my skydiving instructor taught me about RDR

As part of Professional Adviser's series looking at how firms are preparing for RDR, Jones Hill managing director Brian Hill recalls a seminal moment...

As I was walking towards a small plane while on a parachute course in 1990, my Sergeant Major said, to my eternal embarrassment: “Proper planning and preparation prevents poor performance. Now, where’s your parachute, Sir?”

That thought has rested heavily on my mind almost every day since, and found meaning when it came to planning for RDR. I firmly believe it needed to be done, and done properly, for Jones Hill to ride the crest of the RDR wave. As such, the planning phase finished more than 12 months ago and we are now moving with direction through the execution phase.

The two principal strands of RDR – qualifications and remuneration – elbowed their way to the forefront of our monthly, off-site business planning meetings some time ago. Meanwhile, we have endeavoured to ensure we continue to meet and exceed the six Treating Customers Fairly guidelines as well as the 11 FSA Principles of Business and, if we could, run a profitable business.

Qualifications

A recent meeting with our training and competence supervisor highlighted the amount of work I had personally put in to achieve my RDR ‘no regrets’ diploma from the Institute of Financial Studies. Around 400 CPD hours were recorded, but my wife and children would bear witness that there were many, many more.

If you believe my wife, and I suggest that may be a sensible idea, my memory is at times poor. I therefore decided to do something about it so I would not have to pay for exam re-sits. I signed up to a one-day course organised by the New Model Business Academy (NMBA) where the world grand master memory champion (a failed burglar turned fireman in his late 40s from Leeds) showed us how to study, revise and pass exams. Insightful, funny and incredibly helpful for anyone studying and taking exams,  I would highly recommended it.

The first reason advisers often tell me they resent taking the diploma is “we don’t have enough time”. But I would only ever ask my staff to do something I would do or had already done myself and therefore took my diploma while running Jones Hill, looking after my own clients, supporting our advisers, bringing up a young family, and training and competing at a vaguely serious level in my chosen sport.

With no time excuse to fall back on, two Jones Hill advisers have taken up the challenge and passed their first computer-based tests. Both are now awaiting the results of their coursework assignment, with the final exam just a couple of months away.

Let’s not beat about the bush – it is not easy. But it can and should be done, especially as it is our day job. I have been amazed by recent cases where advisers (not Jones Hill I hasten to add) have taken the exams with little or no study and, unsurprisingly, failed. If advisers are this lackadaisical about their own business future, you have to wonder how much interest they take in their clients’ business.