Adviser says independent professional standards body needed to drive advice forward

Speaking on a recent ifa podcast, principal of Moran Partners Financial Planning argued for a college-like structure — an overarching, independent organisation responsible for training and maintaining standards in financial advice.

“What's lacking is kind of like the medical colleges that set some goals and set some agendas and operate independently of anything else. The colleges, the college of surgeons, the college of general practitioners, the college of anaesthetists, are really tasked with setting the responsibilities and the processes and protocols for that particular sector,” Dr Moran explained.

“I strongly think we need a separate body — not an industry association, but actually a professional standards body — to work to start developing some of that stuff,” he continued.

This organisation, Dr Moran explained, would be adviser-driven but supported by academics, not the other way around.

Moreover, he argued, that a standardised set of processes and protocols would make the provision of financial advice easier for the advisers, the regulators, and the customers.

“It would make it easier for the regulators because they would be able to make a quick judgement… And then from a client point of view, they're getting more certainty for what we do. And then that doesn't change the interpersonal relationship, the values-based approach we take. It doesn't change all of that sort of stuff that we do now, but the outcomes that we are producing become more known and more measurable in that regard,” Dr Moran said.

He, however, conceded that this idea, which essentially translates into a type of self-regulation, is “hard to get off the ground”.

“I think financial advice is an early stage profession, but I don't think we're ready to self-regulate just yet because we haven't got that self-regulatory body in place,” he said.

“We have codes of practise, and we have different associations have their codes operation that you got to adopt and they're different. They're all different, slightly different, but they've all evolved from compliance. So, the processes they put in place are all compliance-driven processes, not financial-planning-driven processes,” Dr Moran continued.

Tune into the podcast episode here to hear more.