Why the silence on Provincial?

Sunday, June 18th 2006, 9:29PM

One of the more bizarre things in the Provincial Finance collapse has been the reaction (or lack of) from the Financial Planners and Insurance Advisers Association*.

The Provincial failure is a huge issue for advisers as many, collectively, had a good sum of money in Provincial. Added to that Provincial sponsored the FPIA and Society of Independent Financial Advisers.

If we wanted to add something else it would be that Chris Lee made a public comment that there wouldn't be an adviser which didn't have money with Provincial.

A couple of firms (Goldridge and Myles Financial Planning) have emailed us saying they had no money with Provincial.

So what has the FPIA done?

Zip - that we know of.

There has been a communication to members on the subject, which, rather than shedding light on the issue has instead wound up members.

In the email interim ceo Ross Butler made two comments which upset many people. Perhaps the most annoying was this:

People in glasshouses should not throw stones. I and probably most of us have a few skeletons in our personal closets. Some people running to the media with a "holier than thou" approach about compliance, governance and other issues have a few skeletons that tend to nullify the impact of their comments.

Not exactly comments which paint advisers in a great light.

While the FPIA may be spending time talking to its members, it isn't doing much in terms of communications with external stakeholders such as the public and media.

If the association is serious about its mission to "serve the needs and interests of members and the public" then it should be front footing this issue.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Please email them through to me at Blog@goodreturns.co.nz

*I note that some people call the FPIA the IFA now. To me this is another example of poor communications. One would expect that if a professional organisation rebranded itself it would at least let media organisations know about the change....I await the press release!

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