Advisers Who Outsource Advice Warned

Advisers Who Outsource Advice Warned.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued a warning to financial advisers who outsource elements of regulated financial advisory activities to other firms.

It may surprise you that many financial advisers outsource things like:

• Investment fund decisions
• Investment allocation percentages
• Pension transfer advice
• Equity release
• Discretionary fund management
• Para-planners

…. the list goes on.

Some financial advisers have even been found by the regulator to have outsourced the services to unregulated firms who purport to offer advisory services and then the financial adviser, who has charged you for and advised service, does not then review the "advice" offered. For example, many para-planners do all of the written reports, research and documentation on behalf of the financial adviser, and whilst they may be qualified, many are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Warning by FCA

The FCA has issued a warning to financial advisers who do outsource some of their services confirming that delegating the service to an outside party does not absolve the financial adviser from his/her duty to ensure the suitability of the advice, product or investment funds recommended.

Do we outsource?

We do not outsource any advice whatsoever.  Despite being a small firm we pay significant monthly fees for all of our research tools and materials to enable us to compare thousands of investment funds and policies but no third parties are used to make decisions for our clients, we offer a full personalised financial advice service.

To be honest, we have been in this industry for many years and seen too many horror stories created by poor standards of advice that we then need to correct when clients appoint us.

Our "acid test" is would we trust this individual to give our parents financial advice and the honest answer is we have probably only met one or two advisers over the last 50 combined years’ experience that we would trust to give our parents financial advice in our absence.