News & Blog
The Pitch,
BNN, January 2011. When you look at your investment
portfolio, you might wonder whether you've chosen the right advisor, the
right asset mix, or the right financial products. Warren MacKenzie,
President and CEO, Weigh House Investor Services, wants to empower
Canadians.
click here to watch
AMP NZ moves to
fee for service model, The
Sydney Morning Herald,
October 2010 The world wide tsunami of
ending third party compensation in financial services has hit the shores
of New Zealand! This 350 advisor financial services firm has made the
decision on it's own to make the transition to the fee model (no
regulatory intervention required). ML
click here to read
FP Advance, a UK
based advisor training company, has produced a series of videos (a la
British sitcom) providing a humorous look at a fictional financial
planning firm struggling with the soon-to-be mandatory transition to the
fee model.
click here to view
Australia
mimics RDR (UK retail distribution review) with commission ban for
advisers, citywire, April 2010, by Iain Martin, The
Australian government has announced plans to introduce RDR-style reforms
which will ban financial advisers from taking commission from providers.
click here to read
Proposal to the Task Force
on Financial Literacy:
Tax Deductible Financial Planning Fees Would Increase Financial
Literacy, May 2010, by Marc Lamontagne, CFP, R.F.P., FMA,
All financial planning fees should be tax deductible (currently only
financial planning advice on retirement paid by the employer is not a
taxable benefit). This will increase the number of people seeking advice
and improve the financial literacy level of Canadians.
click here to read the proposal
Making Beautiful Music
Together—why advisors should
form ensembles, AdvisorAnalyst,
March 2010, by Marc Lamontagne,
CFP, R.F.P, FMA,
There are three basic business
models in the financial planning
industry: sole practitioner,
silo, and ensemble. The trend to
forming ensembles or group
practices is well established in
the U.S. among independent
advisors, but has yet to emerge
as a dominant model in Canada.
click here to read
To fee or not to fee: pricing
models in financial counselling,
Bancaria (Italian Journal),
January 2010, by Camilla Mazzoli
and Gianni Nicolini,
An
empirical research on the
Italian market will show the
logic of the advisory pricing
models and the differences
between the models adopted in
USA, UK and Australia. Most the
cases, the pricing strongly
depend upon the type of
financial advisory that is
provided to investors
(independent or tied-agent) but
it is also influenced by the
dimension of the company the
advisory works for, together
with his grounding and training.
Click here to read this paper
Holding The
Purse Strings: Regulating Financial
Planners, December 2009, by the Public
Interest Advocacy Centre,
This is all
encompassing review and regulatory
recommendation of the financial planning
industry including compensation.
"PIAC calls upon the “fee-only” financial
planners to self-organize or for the senior
financial planner self-regulatory
organizations to create a service mark or
designation to
allow consumers to easily find a fee-only
planner. This organization then can
participate in negotiations with provincial
regulators to provide training and
certification
services for the province to achieve the
required standards under each provincial
regulatory system."
click here for the full report
When you look at the
evolution towards the fee model in the U.K.
and Australia, it was not industry driven,
but imposed by a regulatory or licensing
body. For the fee model to become prevalent
in Canada you would have to have some
Government intervention, though with the
current lack of a central regulator, that is
unlikely to happen anytime soon.
ML
COMMISSIONS - PAYMENTS UNDER SCRUTINY,
Investment Executive, November 2009, by
Gavin Adamson,
Summer is
fast approaching in Australia, but a chill
from Down Under is sweeping around the globe
and is being felt by Canadian advisors.
Potential regulatory changes in Australia
have put commissions-based financial advice
under scrutiny, and could set a new
regulatory benchmark globally.
Consultation Paper:
Financial Planner Remuneration, by the FPA
(Australia),
Want to see
what started the FPA down the road to
banning trailers?
ML
PODCAST and PPT SLIDES: Pricing for
Profitability (Pricing Practices in an
Evolving Ultra-Wealth Marketplace), by John
Benevides, Family Office Exchange,
presented at
the Schwab Impact2009 conference
Click here to access
Excellent
presentation and well worth the $20 cost.
ML
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