Financial advisers have little hope of becoming fully fledged professionals while rogue advisers are allowed to jump between dealer groups with impunity.
AMP Financial Planning managing director Michael Guggenheimer believes the problem is ongoing and that it is time for dealer group heads to take action.
“I would welcome a conversation among licensee heads… about the ethics and quality of the people that seemingly move from licensee to licensee,” he said.
“[If we] support planners that potentially do not represent a quality outcome, then we all suffer accordingly.
“How do you have a desire to be a profession, which espouses education, ethics and enforcement as hallmarks, and yet we allow people to move around?”
While the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms impose higher standards on the industry, Guggenheimer says dealer group heads should be doing more.
“Seldom does my telephone ring from another licensee to ask about someone’s background,” he said. “They might get information from somewhere else… but there probably should have been a few times when the phone rang.
“Trying to get the industry to move into a profession, we have to manage the quality and continue to raise the bar. I’ve never heard of a profession stand still when it comes to quality.
“I’m not saying we’re bad today but I’m saying that as we take strides forward, there will be some that don’t make that hurdle.”
This requires collaboration from the whole of the Industry. Michael is quite correct is what he is saying.
The issue however, as it stands, is that unless we get permission from an applicant to call a particular referee for a reference check, then we cannot call. i.e. if the applicant has not given permission to call their previous licence then we are restricted. Some licensees do get written permission from applicants to conduct a compliance check with the prior licensee. If you have an adviser who has done something they should not have done, and they are going to another licensee, you cannot simply pick up the phone and call that licensee unless you are prepared to breach Privacy.
The collaboration is that all stakeholders in the Industry should discuss ethics and professionalism with a view to creating common frameworks regarding employing new Advisers.
In the legal industry the Law Society regulates their process well, and we should duplicate for our own.
in deed, a pretty serious problem, but there are plenty of others around that will stop financial planning’s rise to a profession long before this one.
Although coming from AMP you cant really take it seriously can you? I’m assuming that given you published this piece your belief is that AMP is somehow handeling this better than any other institutional product, sorry advice group? Unfortunately your history would suggest not, AMP Horizons contributing to professionalism? ha also a classic oh and lets not forget the dimwit AMP adviser whom I’m currently dragging through FOS (on behalf of a not so happy client). Given that AMP “100% supports” the kindergarden advice this idiot provided I must say it has only reaffirmed my personal opinion (and might I add long experience) as to the quality of large insto advice and believe me, “professional” is not a word I would have opened this article with.
Glass houses! As the practice manager, not too long ago I was in the position of having to terminate an employed adviser from the business due to an inability to comply with even the most basis standards of record keeping. Our licensee rep was fully aware of the reasons for termination. Shortly afterwards, the adviser was set up in his own business under an extremely generous practice start up program. Which licensee? Perhaps Michael should be also picking up the phone and talking to business owners within his own group as well.
“Seldom does my telephone ring from another licensee to ask about someone’s background,” he said. “They might get information from somewhere else… but there probably should have been a few times when the phone rang.” So, Michael, if you believed you should have got ‘that call’ from the new licensee, and that such trading of views was appropriate, why didn’t you pick up the phone and give the new licensee a pre-emptive heads up yourself?
I get the point, and it’s an admirable one, that the quality of advisers is an issue and that there are a few questionable characters who seem to churn through licensees and thus remain under the radar. However, surely it’s dangerous to suggest that the trading of potentially defamatory scuttlebutt and innuendo between you boys is an appropriate or desirable response to the problem? It could easily be argued that if you truly believed an adviser was a ‘rogue’ then your first, and possibly only, call should have been to ASIC.