Compliance Archives - Tony Vidler

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 […]

How can you be sure that your advice will pass the test?

by Tony Vidler The nagging worry for financial advisers in today’s 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 is fundamentally what […]

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 complains about “insurance churn” or the “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 do you know your financial advice is suitable?

by Tony Vidler Knowing that your financial advice is suitable for a client is something that every professional adviser is willing to attest to, but proving it when challenged can be incredibly dificult. Advisers are increasingly being challenged and therefore seeking assurance that their practices are robust and will withstand such scrutiny. Whether that scrutiny […]

A Statement Of Advice should be a “statement”

by Tony Vidler When it comes to providing advice in writing to a client there is undoubtedly unnecessary complexity usually. In fact the proverbial “Statement Of Advice” has become anything but a “statement”. It generally takes the form of a tome… And a “tome is a scholarly work…usually large, heavy and laborious in its detail“. […]

Pro Bono work: it is still professional advice

by Tony Vidler Oddly, I was asked whether pro bono work is still considered professional advice, implying immediately that it carried some lesser responsibility on the part of an adviser simply because they were not earning revneue from it. Why would pro bono clients deserve any lesser standards of ethical behaviour, professional competency or […]

Compliant Advice: Here are the only 3 things that matter

by Tony Vidler Whenever the topic of compliance, or the “advice process”, comes up most advisers see themselves like this: Everyone is throwing everything at you with the sole intention of destroying you, right? As a consequence, compliance is largely considered a burden. As is usually the way of these things a substantial body […]

Building Your Reputation: Talk About The Elephants In The Room

by Tony Vidler When Accountants struggle to be highly trusted then financial advisers are going to have a real battle doing so. If the Accountants only get rated as “Highly trusted” in professional ethics and honesty by less than half the population then what chance that an Insurance Broker will rank higher in the […]

The 5 Levels Of Professional Competence

by Tony Vidler Professional competence is now a clearly demonstrable thing isn’t it? Or is it? Can an adviser be considered as having competence and incompetence simultaneously? I think so. Competence has been a primary focus of regulatory reform, and that’s fair enough. Consumers have a right to expect it from their advisers and […]

Imagine if we REALLY were 100% honest with clients

by Tony Vidler We are expected to be 100% honest with clients, and total honesty with clients is a wonderful concept but 100% honesty in all things with our clients would kill the relationships and kill the industry. Don’t get me wrong: I believe in full transparency and ensuring consumers get all the information […]

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