The Canadians are showing the lead globally and moving closer to protecting the designation 'Financial Planner' and it's about time the UK followed this positive step to improve consumer trust in the advice profession.

There has been a growing, and somewhat contentious, debate among Financial Planners and Paraplanners recently about the fairest way to charge clients. Despite years of regulatory intervention in the advisory sector it remains a surprisingly grey area.

Even in these gender-fluid days I have to confess to being entirely male, as far as I know. This means that I will never truly experience what it feels like to be a women patronised by a man. I will never know what it’s like to be treated as a second class citizen by a financial adviser or mortgage broker.

I attended last week’s CISI / IFP Paraplanning Conference at Hinckley in Leicestershire. It was a big success and yet...something is still missing from the burgeoning Paraplanning profession and something quite big. It needs a new direction.