Best Practice Advice Archives - Page 8 of 10

Compliant Advice: Paper Beats Scissors Every Time

by Tony Vidler When it comes to compliant advice Advisers really need to grasp that they are playing a game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” with every client engagement now. There almost certainly will be an instance where a client throws the Rock…. We try to beat it with Paper. Complaints authority or regulator takes to […]

Knowing Your Professional Purpose Is Your Game Changer

by Tony Vidler All the regulatory change has many advisers seriously thinking about how to position for the future, and how to lift performance in a time of squeezed practice margins. Many are stuck in their existing paradigm of doing business though, and struggle to accept things like remuneration models changing rapidly, long term shifts […]

Eliminate tyre kickers, and value your expertise

by Tony Vidler Being properly valued for your expertise and eliminating the time-wasting tyre-kickers is an ongoing problem for most financial advisers. That is even more true for those making the transition from purely commission-based remuneration to generating fee-paying work where they are charging for that time or expertise. Managing the remuneration transition whilst also […]

Advisers need to get selling

by Tony Vidler Advisers: Good advice process is not enough. Being technically competent is not enough. You have to get selling. I know that “Sell” is seen as a bit of a diry word these days, but we cannot back away from it. You have to sell if you are going to be effective at […]

Let’s be honest with our honesty

by Tony Vidler Disclosure is back on the regulatory agenda again, and the rules will undoubtedly be changing yet again. There is no doubt in my mind that disclosure of costs, fees and conflicts enhances trust and professional credibility. However, there is also no doubt in mind that disclosure can be taken so far that […]

Client Complaints: Fight it, or just Fix It?

by Tony Vidler Client complaints are a fact of life. It is virtually impossible to run a service business where everyone is happy 100% of the time, as human beings are involved and they are unpredictable creatures with ever-shifting expectations. The art of good client complaint handling is knowing when to fight and when to […]

Commission-Based Life & Health Advisers Need To Get Moving

by Tony Vidler There is clearly a mood afoot for various industry stakeholders to see up-front commissions reduce in size in a number of financial products, particularly in life and health insurance products. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy of course, as the more it gets debated the greater the acceptance of the inevitability. […]

How to balance client time with practice development

by Tony Vidler A genuine challenge for advice firms right now is balancing client time as well as do all the work necessary to lift standards and improve business systems. There are after all only so many hours in a day, but then there are deadlines for when new standards and rules have to be […]

Is Insurance Churn Really The Issue We Think It is?

by Tony Vidler Any time an insurance product is replaced by an adviser with an alternative one someone begins howling about “insurance churn” or “twisting of policies” and the immediate inference is that something unethical just occurred. Sometimes that is true of course, and there are undoubtedly bottom feeders in the industry who survive by […]

How can you be sure your advice passes the test?

by Tony Vidler The perpetual worry for financial advisers in the often over-regulated environment is “how can I be sure that my advice will pass the test?” The concern is understandable given that policymakers typically do not understand the difficulty of applying any sort of objective assessment of suitability to professional opinions – which […]

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