Profesional Service

The professional body, which awards the Chartered Financial Planner designation and has 40,000 members, says it wants to improve client outcomes and increase access to financial advice.

Advisers will be encouraged to support the taskforce campaign and sign up for a new Financial Vulnerabilty Charter.

The taskforce will promote wider understanding of clients in vulnerable circumstances and encourage good practice as well as addressing the expectations of regulatory standards and public expectations. 

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To adopt the Financial Vulnerability Charter financial advisers need to commit to the nine core consumer guide pledges.

These:

1. Acknowledge their services involve the application of specialist and technical financial knowledge which places many clients in a position of dependency.
2. Ensure clients’ interests are placed above

The price changes will come into effect as of 1 February 2021 and apply to the model portfolios available to Financial Planners through the 7IM platform as well as third party platforms.

7IM follows a growing number of providers removing VAT from their Managed Portfolio Services, recently including Brooks Macdonald and AJ Bell.

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The decision to remove VAT follows industry discussions with HMRC about the requirement to add VAT to MPS products with HMRC indicating it is not required. Other firms which have now removed VAT from MPS investment products include Brewin Dolphin, Tilney Smith & Williamson and Investec.

The changes mean the 7IM Active and Passive model portfolios will have an all-in cost of 0.25% going forward, while the Bespoke model portfolios range between 0.25%-0.30%.

The 7IM Pathway

An estimated 370,000 SME policyholders could be helped by the judgment.

Last year the FCA launched a business interruption insurance test case to seek a judicial judgment on whether insurers should pay out after many argued Covid-19 interruption was not covered by policies. 

The Supreme Court today delivered its judgment on the test case and substantially allowed the FCA’s appeal on behalf of policyholders. 

The FCA says this should complete the legal process for impacted policies and means that many thousands of policyholders will now have their claims for coronavirus-related business interruption losses paid. Payouts could total millions of pounds and help thousands of small firms as well as preserving jobs.

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Sheldon Mills, executive director, consumers and competition at the FCA, said: “Coronavirus is causing substantial loss and

Their words reminded me once again that while there are many ways to run a Financial Planning business, focusing entirely on acquiring funds under management – with little regard to client happiness and wellbeing – is not one of them.

Their firm, a lifestyle planning firm and therefore on the ‘holistic’ wing of the Financial Planning profession, announced a couple of senior appointments this week as it plans to expand this particular approach.

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It promoted John Moran to be its new executive chair and Neil Bage to the new role of chief behavioural officer. I do not know many Financial Planning firms with CBOs yet but it could well be the coming trend. It’s perhaps best seen as an extended COO with some behavioural science included.

Anyone who believes they have been exposed to, or have fallen victim to, an impersonation scam that features a clone of Quilter’s branding or marketing materials, can use the tool to report their concerns directly to the firm.

The online tool will report suspected scams directly to Quilter’s financial crime team, who will assess the legitimacy of the investment proposition in each individual case and provide a response directly to the consumer the next working day offering support and guidance on next steps.

Investment scams that impersonate a regulated financial services firm have surged in recent years, increasing by 634% since 2010. Impersonation scams accounted for 37% of all FCA warnings issued between 2010 and December 2020.

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Quilter’s brand has been used by scammers in the past in an attempt

The company says it has been carrying out a strategic review for the past 12 months and identified some duplication of tasks and some unnecessary work which made a number of jobs redundant.

Staff were informed about the changes this morning with some set to be offered voluntary redundancy or, in some cases, a transfer to other roles within the company.

About 1 in 10 of the company’s 2,000 staff will go.

The company has stressed that the changes have been planned for some time are not related to recent calls from activist investor Primestone for a major shake-up of the business.

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It is not believed any of the 4,300 advisers or partners who trade under the SJP banner are directly affected by the job reduction.

SJP CEO Andrew

As part of the changes, Jim Kelly, group business development director, will leave Sesame Bankhall but intends to continue to be involved in the financial services sector.

Mr Howells will move from his current role as managing director of Sesame Network to become Sesame Bankhall Group’s chief operating officer.

He will oversee the delivery of services to 11,000 advisers and will be responsible for the development of IT and digital and data systems.

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Mr Liston, currently managing director of Bankhall and PMS Mortgage Club, becomes Sesame Bankhall Group’s new managing director for distribution.

His role will include responsibility for Sesame Network, marketing and events teams. He will also lead relationship management and client engagement activity across the group’s three brands: Sesame, Bankhall, and PMS.

Both will continue