APFA has written to regulatory chiefs suggesting the creation of a ‘safe-harbour’ to ease problems surrounding insistent clients.
The FCA produced an insistent clients factsheet last year, which APFA said it welcomed.
In a written statement to the FCA, APFA officials said: “However, we believe that greater clarity could still be provided in terms of how to protect advisers who transact a pension transfer against advice.
“Perhaps a safe-harbour could be provided for those advisers who follow a certain set of rules or the approach outlined in FCA best practice e.g getting the client themselves to put in writing and in their own words an acknowledgement that they are proceeding against advice.
“Or the FCA could make it absolutely clear that no liability would attach to those advisers who gave advice which ‘enabled’ a pension transfer to take place, even if the recommendation was not to transfer.”
The organisation also belives there is a “perception of systemic failures with Financial Ombudsman Service decision-making” which it claimed was “distorting firms’ behaviour to the detriment of consumers”.
This has also had the effect of “creating greater unwillingness to become involved in insistent client business”, APFA said.
It said: “As long as firms believe that no matter what the regulator says, FOS will judge matters differently, then the fear of adverse judgements will not go away, and firms will not be prepared to take the risks involved.”
APFA also reiterated its campaign for a liability ‘longstop’.
It said: “We believe that the current unlimited liability approach – where an adviser essentially carries liability for advice given until his death – is inimical to investment and innovation in the industry.
“This includes the lack of willingness of advisers to get involved in new or seemingly unclear areas such as transacting insistent client business with regards to pension transfer as business decisions are made with an eye to limiting future liabilities.”