[Weekly Wrap] Believe it or not

From the believe-it-or-not file this week we have two Code Committee members resigning because of the results of the highly controversial Consumer survey of financial advisers.

Friday, November 13th 2009, 4:00PM

We ran the initial story on this yesterday and have an update today which includes comments from the Commissioner of Financial Advisers, Annabel Cotton.

Reader comments so far echo two themes; one is that advisers are now a soft and easy target for the media; the second is that such a flawed survey would have this sort of outcome.

Also with regulation Good Returns can reveal that the Code Committee has extended the deadline for submissions on its competency discussion paper. But you need to ask for an extension.

Find out how here.

A question I was asked this week was: Who would have thought at the start of the year that two of the bigger brands in the industry would disappear? Of course the two brands in question are ING - which is going for sure, and AXA.

AMP's proposed takeover of AXA isn't too much of a surprise. There has been talk for some time that AXA's ownership would change at some stage. Whether the deal goes ahead or whether another suitor will enter the fray is something to watch out for.

In the meantime we look at what a combined entity would look like in this story.

Gold hit the headlines this week which coincided with our story where Rothschild senior first vice president Sandra Mueller-Gisler suggested the precious metal was not as safe as investors think.

We attended last week's Grosvenor conference and have an update on how the organisation is going and some management reshuffles.

In Insurance News , Asteron boss Sean Carroll talks about what needs to be done to grow the insurance market and we have a piece on two people who intend to "clean up" the sector.

Depositrates.co.nz reports this week on South Canterbury Finance appointing new auditors; SBS launching its first PIE fund and the Hanover story - which has had a few comments.

Also in the news are comments that the Reserve Bank is still predicting there will be further failures in the finance company sector, triggering payouts under the Government Deposit Guarantee scheme.

A sign things are picking up in the economy is that there are a growing number of new appointments being made. It seems firms are recruiting again. In the list of appointments this week we have Fidelity Life making two key appointments, a new KiwiSaver boss at Tower, meanwhile Spicers and DecisionMakers both added new advisers to their ranks.

In our popular Special Report section we have Liontamer's new Emerging Markets fund and TOWER's Update on personal superannuation and KiwiSaver.

Have a great weekend
Philip

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