Five key financial services firms have today published a report into adviser and consultancy charges.
The report ‘A shared approach to adviser and consultancy charging’ involved Aegon, Friends Life, Legal & General, Prudential and Scottish Life and was facilitated by Deloitte.
The aim of the report was to identify some common processes and terminology for adviser and consultancy charges to benefit advisers, customers and providers.
All financial advisers must offer some form of adviser charging by 2013 as the new RDR rules abolish commission.
The report includes a series of flow charts into how the firms feel adviser and consultancy charges can best be implemented as well as Q&A’s of possible scenarios. It also offers guidelines on how firms should refund a client and VAT.
Steven Cameron, head of regulatory strategy at Aegon, said: “We feared there could be chaos in early 2013 if advisers were to agree certain charging structures with clients, only to find the provider they then recommended wasn’t offering that particular option.
“The opportunity to contribute to a cross-provider initiative to identify where it would be to the benefit of advisers, clients and providers to develop some common processes was something we couldn’t pass up.”
Stephen Gay, director general of AIFA, said: “We know extremely well in our industry about the devil being in the detail. And so it is with Adviser Charging and Consultancy Charging. Simple in concept but not without practical challenges in their application.
“We therefore very much welcome the initiative taken by this group, comprising of experienced advisers and product providers, in taking their time to work through in detail these important matters.”
The report is available to read here
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