Happy holidays....and an exciting 2015 ahead

With this being our last newsletter of 2014, we want to wish everybody a happy holiday break (if you’re having one). To say 2014 was a challenging year for the financial advice profession is an understatement – in the words of Queen Elizabeth 2 you could say it was the profession’s “annus horribilis”.

2014 saw flip-flopping of the FOFA rules and hence uncertainty for financial advisers and consumers, threats of Royal Commissions and a constancy of negative press. On the upside, with the release of the final report of the Financial Systems Inquiry last week, we hope to see the green grass through the mire. Should key recommendations from the report be implemented (see our press release here), we believe this will go some way to helping reestablish trust in the financial advice sector. 

Despite our efforts, we weren’t immune to criticism ourselves, with one adviser commenting:

But many of you echo the voice of another adviser and understand what we are trying to achieve with Adviser Ratings:

Let’s kick 2014 to the curb. In the words of Brad Fox, CEO of the AFA, at the start of the year:

We believe with the advent of Adviser Ratings and other initiatives by the incumbents and new entrants, I think 2014 will be looked on as the turning point for financial advice in Australia, in part to the disruptive thinking highlighted by Brad.

There is a risk some advisers end up being the "Kodak" of the financial advice industry - we all remember a company that was averse to change and was derisory of new entrants and adaptive technologies, only to be left floundering a few years later and by then, it was all too late. In 2015, we look forward to welcoming a whole new customer to the financial advice profession and to financial advisers. We also look forward to bringing more good news stories about the role advisers play for their clients (see Christopher's featured articles this week).

As a final comment, the advisers that will benefit most from this service in the coming years are those who are being rated highly by their own customers….with this, I’d like to make special mention to the 5 advisers with the most reviews in 7 weeks:

Julian Battistella of Battistella Financial Services                    33 reviews

Robert Goudie of Meritum Financial Group                            26 reviews

Glen Killen of Strategy Financial Consulting                           20 reviews

Michael Bishop of Godfrey Pembroke                                     20 reviews

Neil Salkow of Roskow Independent Advisory                        18 reviews

Enjoy the rest of 2014 and we look forward to bringing you new developments in 2015.

Angus

Article by:

Angus Woods

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