IFA FIRMS HAVE SOME WAY TO GO BEFORE RDR…
Posted on:
04
Jan
2012
by James Cholmondley Farmer
Latest data provides insight into IFA progress to becoming RDR Ready
London, January 2012 – New analysis from the MyTouchstone database from Workload, an Equifax company, reveals that despite the fact that there is now just over a year until RDR, IFA firms still have a long way to go to be RDR ready come January 2013.
The latest MyTouchstone research shows that nearly 90% of over 4300 IFAs surveyed reported that more than 25% of their income is still generated by commission. To be classed as MyTouchstone RDR Ready, a participating firm must be able to demonstrate that over 75% of its income is generated by fees. These new findings, therefore, may be another area of concern for the IFA sector as a whole, as well as the financial organisations offering investment products through IFA channels.
“Continued reliance on commission unsurprisingly remains a key hurdle for firms to overcome” stated Neil Cunningham, Workload Director & General Manager. “More than 400 IFAs log on to the MyTouchstone database every week to upload fresh data, providing a valuable insight into IFA business make-up and qualifications and making it highly reflective of current market activity.
“Adviser qualifications is another area of concern, due to the requirement that at least one adviser must be qualified to QCF Level 4 for a firm to be deemed RDR Ready but our latest survey suggests that 57.5% of IFA businesses do not have any advisers qualified to this level.”
5,938 IFA firms and 7,473 individual advisers participated in the latest MyTouchstone Qualification survey. Of these, 27.2% of firms have all their advisers qualified to at least QCF Level 4. 39.5% of advisers are already QCF Level 4 Qualified.
The top ten locations for QCF Level 4 Qualified advisers are:
- London EC
- Bristol
- Leeds
- Birmingham
- Glasgow
- Manchester
- Edinburgh
- Reading
- Exeter
- Sheffield
“We expected to start seeing a real acceleration in firms changing their business models in preparation for RDR but the data suggests there is still a long way to go. It will be interesting to see how the numbers change when we publish again at the beginning of 2012, and when there will be less than 12 months to go” concluded Neil Cunningham.
Tags: IFA | qcf | rdr
