Keeping up - but not with the Kardashians

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Education is one area we need to spend more time on than we have previously budgeted and considered, although we all knew it was coming.

Thursday, May 27th 2021, 10:35AM 7 Comments

by Jon-Paul Hale

Sorry, far less interesting than reality TV, though more critical.

However, I don't think many appreciated how complex it might get - but more on that in my next column.

The number of hours spent on CPD isn't a straight line, your mileage may vary.

This ties into what I watched last week, after the Financial Service Provider Register (FSPR) emails to a significant number of advisers.

One thing I noted was the reasoning was a little confusing and wasn't well explained. This is relevant as we're all going to have to upskill on how the mechanics work to ensure we don't screw it up.

So what happened, and why was the message confusing?

The impact was Dispute Resolution Scheme (DRS) providers got lots of calls about membership which were not related to them but the actions of the FSPR.

Looking back to March 15, when the new rules came into effect, the FSPR deleted all of the DRS records for financial advisers. Unless you had changed, these hadn't been updated in years. And for FAPs they hadn't been set up yet.

When this was done, most didn't notice, and there was a reason for it. The DRS provider linking now happens at the Financial Advice Provider (FAP) level, not the Financial Adviser level (FA), so there is no need for the FA to have the DRS record.

So while we were all focused on FAP's and linking to FAP's, which many still hadn't done by May 18 when the FSPR email went out, the FSPR was watching DRS records.

MBIE confirmed it had suspended the 10-day requirement from March 15 for some time, two months it would seem by the messages.

The other aspect of this is that many are under the impression that after June 15, the de-registration process would be started (the FSPR site says the 16th, which I think is a full three months from the date you could link your FA, which was March 16).

So when the email from the FSPR came out initiating the de-registration process due to missing DRS provider, everyone called their DRS. Who had no idea what was going on.

Which is the point needed here. You have until three months after March 15 to link your FA to a FAP. That is supposed to be a hard date. As March 15th was the end of applying for your TL, we have the same linking to a FAP.

However, the notice on May 18 wasn't about de-registering FAs it was about de-registering FAPs. Yes, this appears to be focused on the DRS record of the FAP, not the FA record.

These emails have also been suggested to target individual advisers with the around 400 emails that went out. This ties in with the number of FAP's likely not to have been sorted.

Those individuals targeted are likely not appreciating their structure.

The ones I have looked at directly who had said they were individuals when I checked on the FSPR have been an Authorised Body (AB) for their company record without a DRS defined. And they haven't been linked to the aggregator FAP or their AB. So the message to them was appropriate.

Also, individuals can be FAP's under the rules, not ideal, and not desirable, but possible. These individuals may be referring to themselves as FAs, but they are technically not allowed to as a FA and must use FAP.

It could be that these individuals are the ones that also got emailed. This also stands to reason the FA/FAP naming confusion would be there as they haven't updated their FSPR records.

Confused? Yes, most of the industry seems to be.

This raises the question if June 16 is the hard date we have been told where are the corresponding de-registration notices for the FAs that are not linked?

We have been told June 16 is a drop-dead date, so if you cannot link to a FAP after the 16th (FAs registered before March 15), we should have seen these notices as well, shouldn't we?

However, we also need to consider that FAs will change and move, and we don't want to be de-registering FAs every time they leave a FAP, so we will likely have a reasonable grace period when FAs leave and de-link from a FAP.

This is where the three-month (not 90 days) measure comes in, where there is a three month grace period to reconnect before the FSPR initiates their 20 working day notice for de-registration.

My guess is we have a bit of grace where lack of linking is likely to have a notice period. However, I'm not going to try it out or suggest you try it out either.

Another thing I have also noticed with mortgage advisers on the FSPR is there's a missing link between many advisers and their aggregator, which is a story for another day.

If your FA record on the DRS hasn't been linked to a FAP or AB and/or the FAP and AB, if you have one, hasn't linked their DRS, then you need to get a round-tuit! ASAP!

Tags: CPD FAP FSPR Jon-Paul Hale Opinion

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