Adviser watchdog moves on
The Investor Advocacy business which was set up by former Tower executive Peter Baynes to help investors who have received poor advice is being wound down.
Thursday, March 4th 2004, 10:36PM
Perpetual Trust is wholly owned by the soon to be listed Pyne Gould Corporation.
Baynes said he initially had a strong level of enquiries from people when he launched the company, however things have quietened down as the market have improved.
He says a number of lessons have come out of the exercise.
One is that many people who use professional advisory services don’t disclose their total assets to the adviser.
This means it is very difficult for an adviser to provide good ideas on asset allocation. Baynes says this is an across-the-board issue and not something which is solely the domain of lower quality advisers.
He says there is an opportunity to become an “overlay adviser”. That is providing investors with asset allocation advice for all their investments.
“What was as clear as the nose on my face is that nobody is managing the total asset allocation. The most important thing in investment management (asset allocation) is an accident, even with the good advisers.”
Baynes has always been an advocate of self-regulation, but says for it to work well some changes need to take place.
The two ombudsman schemes need to be more comprehensive and need to cover all advice given in the market. Currently a lot of products and providers fall outside the scope of their jurisdiction.
In the same vein he would like to see the Financial Planners and Insurance Advisers complaints process accelerated.
Baynes says he has helped people recover money from bad advice, but has also played another important role. People who sought his services felt they had been hard done by because they had lost a lot of money when the international markets fell. In fact these people had suitable advice and just needed some “closure” on the issue.
He believes there are still a good deal of rogues in the advisory business and some of the worst cases were situations where he couldn’t help people.
Baynes says there are advisers in the market who are “one step ahead of being out of jail.”
“There are some real rogues out there,” he says.
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