Where am I? 
Home Better Business Regulation RDR
One says 'yes', the other 'no': Financial Escape's Phil Castle and Old Mill's Simon Cole debate the call for a one-year delay to RDR.
Phil Castle (pictured)
Director, Financial Escape
“Absolutely. I achieved Level 4 last week, but a delay is necessary. We need to bear in mind the FSA has not issued the platform paper or details of the simplified advice regime yet. Once these are in the public domain, there needs to be a reasonable timescale for advisers to take action.
“It is possible to reach Level 4 quite quickly but why should anyone do it when they don’t actually know what the rules are yet?
“The RDR should never have included a cliff-edge date. Instead, the regulator should have let firms achieve one objective at a time. The FSA hasn’t really achieved any of its own objectives or clarified any of its real targets. It only finalised the Level 4 requirement last summer which meant we could identify which gaps needed to be filled.
“We should be looking at ways of making RDR better for the consumer. It should be less about a cliff-edge date and more about finding ways of encouraging advisers who have not finished their Level 4 – or are debating whether to stay in the industry – to remain for the benefit of their clients.
"If that means advisers with Level 3 wish to remain advisers but with supervision, then that is certainly an argument that could be put. The FSA and the ABI say the industry needs to re-install trust, but ditching Level 3 advisers will not achieve that. We want Level 3 advisers on side.”
Simon Cole
Partner, Old Mill
“This is simple: I do not agree with a delay because the RDR has been with us for five years now. I do not see any advantage at all in delaying the review for those firms that have not been doing the preparatory work and getting themselves qualified.
“I would have thought the whole industry was working towards a deadline of the end of next year. We have had enough notice of what is required. Pushing it back will not achieve anything.
“I do not buy into the idea that delaying the RDR would allow more advisers to stay in the industry, meaning the public would have greater access to our services. I believe those planning to leave the industry have got into that mindset because they are struggling with a new business model, the examinations, or both.
“I am surprised [the TSC] called for a delay, unless it was purely lobbied by groups of under-qualified or older advisers. We should stick to the deadline and I think the FSA will do, because this is what it has been planning for years.
“What’s the point in having a five-year deadline for the industry to become a profession, just to say: ‘Oh actually, we did not mean that and we are now putting it back’? That would undermine the credibility of the FSA.
“For those businesses which back a delay, what are they going to do in the extra 12 months they were unable to do in the last three-and-half years?”
| Share | |
| Comment | Head-to-head: Should RDR be delayed? |
More from professional adviser
Email alerts
Recommended reading
Categories
Topics
Comments
Tomorrow, tomorrow!
Why should there be a delay in implementing the new rules on qualifications? Human nature being what it is, this will just mean that quite a few of those not yet qualified to the required Level 4 standard will breathe a collective sigh of relief and do nothing more about getting qualified until the next revised deadline looms, when they will agitate for a further delay! A depressingly large number of people in this industry continue to want to be remunerated by selling products and not having adequate qualifications to help confirm their professionalism, whilst in the same breath, wanting to be seen as part of a professional profession. I almost despair!
Posted by: Barry Lorenz
If only it was just above RDR and a few exams
Sadly I think many are missing the whole issue around RDR and it's implications. Exams are only a small part of what RDR will do. Let us not forget also that Doctors and Surgeaons etc who spend many years getting qualified to proctice and then have more training once they do so one could argue they have the most qualifications and training etc than many professions. Despite all that the NHS compensation bill currently budgeted for and due to be paid over the next 10 years is £15 Billion (and rising) and most of the compensation claims are for "clinical negligence" which you can argue is equivalent as poor advice. The bill is as far as I am aware paid for by tax payers though NHS trusts not those in the industry, again another unfairness of our industry. If exams mean good advice is given how come we have this massive compensation bill for negligence in the NHS then? Sure things do need to change but is RDR really the answer and is this the really best way to do it? Personally I do not think so but our concerns are ignored as if we do not exist. Support RDR and you support a flawed system and I get the impression it is the advisers who deal with high earners and high net worth clients who show the most support and are the most vocal of that but what about the majority who are not high earners, how will they obtain decent advice? These people need advice more than any other in my view and RDR could well fail them.
Posted by: Michael Fallas
Related articles
Most Read
Audio / Visual
With the industry's biggest fund managers, IFAonline welcomes you to the media centre.
This year we have 14 awards designed to mark out the very best products in a highly competitive and innovative market. This includes three new awards for 2011 to reflect the developments in this rapidly growing market: Best Dual/Multi-Index Product, Best Structured (Oeic) Fund and Best Structured Product Provider.
Events
Poll
|
|
Job search
Ifaonlinejobs will open the right investment career path for you. Search hundreds of vacancies on www.ifaonlinejobs.co.uk now
In Focus
Two months left before the ‘real RDR deadline’ – are you compliant with the required professional...
Viewpoints
2012 marks a watershed for the Life companies, fund managers, banks and advisers who service...
sponsored by
Hmmmmm.....
It seems that many advisers who have willingly or grudgingly achieved the QCF4 level feel it expedient to tell the rest of us to get on with it. We have not had 5 years - The infamous Gleneagles speech was September 2006 and the first RDR paper was a 2007 discussion paper fiollowed by various 'consultation' papers. The actual framework has not been known for nineteen months yet and even then the precise details have been slow in coming through. The FSA is anxious to be seen as consumer champions and mistakenly believe that this cobbed together tosh will enfranchise the consumer. The industry is still fighting this devastation and that is one reason for seeking a delay.
Posted by: Alan Lakey