IFA should be more visible: Dodds

Getting out and about, making the Institute of Financial Advisers more visible to industry participants is top of the new chief executive’s to-do list.

Tuesday, February 4th 2014, 6:00AM 4 Comments

by Susan Edmunds

Fred Dodds has been in the job just over two weeks, taking over from Penny Mudford.

He said advisers needed associations now more than ever before to help them work through regulatory change.

But they needed to be able to show advisers the added value they could gain by joining. “We need to say ‘come with us on the journey and we’ll help you with your CPD plan', because advisers are struggling with ‘what do I do’?”

He said he wanted the IFA to be a point of contact for everyone in the industry. “If someone has decided they are going to have a career in financial services, and they’re going to do risk and only risk and they’re only going to do the kitchen table market, because that’s where 80% of the risk business is, I want them to know that Fred Dodds would like to talk to you because you’ve made the decision to be professional.”

He said risk advisers were the base of the financial planning pyramid and it was important to have good people in that part of the market.

But he also wanted to engage people who were going to offer a wide range of advice, and get into things such as KiwiSaver.

And he said the IFA was a natural fit for people who were wanted to offer full financial planning and investment services. “If you’re doing the diploma you might as well do a bit more study and become a CFP.”

CFP numbers were growing worldwide and it would become a more popular and recognised designation in New Zealand, he said.

He said financial planning was a great industry but associations needed to make clear the value they offered members. “I’m seeing how we can become a more helpful and useful organisation.”

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Comments from our readers

On 6 February 2014 at 12:57 pm Amused said:

But they (IFA) needed to be able to show advisers the added value they could gain by joining. “We need to say ‘come with us on the journey and we’ll help you with your CPD plan', because advisers are struggling with ‘what do I do’?”

Actually most advisers aren’t struggling around this issue thanks. If the only carrot that associations like the IFA have to dangle now in front of advisers is “help” with CPD then their membership numbers are only going to decline even further sorry.

At the end of the day both associations and advisers are running a business. However unless the former offers something of real value to the latter then advisers won’t choose to belong.

On 10 February 2014 at 11:46 am Stan Walker said:

The issue that the IFA needs to promote is the fact they can act as a significant lobby group to assist those in the field to ensure that those in the beaucracy do not make things so difficult as to be impossible to provide advice. This is a tremendous value to smaller operators in particular.

On 10 February 2014 at 12:03 pm brent sheather said:

Bit of a circular argument here Stan..You might also say that the reason we have had a lot of the new rules is because of the bad behaviour of so many IFA members in the past. Read Gareth's book after the panic to see the names...many former IFA notables.

On 12 February 2014 at 10:41 am Stan Walker said:

Cheers Brent, I hear what you are saying.

Point is though the immense majority of advisors have no bad behaviour and need representation around the legislative table. Otherwise you are simply dumped in the same basket as them as destined to provide 80 pages of bumpf every time you say low fee index fund with pension asset allocation based upon obscure american study from 1996

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