The financial planning industry will never be a profession if it keeps putting itself down, according to Fiducian’s managing director, Indy Singh.
Speaking on a panel at Money Management’s Platform, Fintech, and Wraps conference at the Gold Coast last week, Singh argued that the industry gave fantastic service and cared and looked after their clients.
This was in response to fellow panellist, PHD Management Consulting principal, Paul Harding-Davis who said the industry needed to move to a professional model without dealer groups appointing advisers.
“Here I am running a dealer group and I get to say ‘you’re an adviser’ whereas a professional body says if someone is an accountant. I think dealer groups should get together and say they’ll never appoint an adviser unless they get a certificate of practice from the FPA [Financial Planning Association], AFA [Association of Financial Advisers], etc,” he said.
“We could move to a professional model in that sense.”
Singh replied that the industry was a profession if it believed it was a profession.
“I see guys in the industry always saying we have to become a profession. I’ve been in this industry since 1987, the day before the crash, and we are a profession – we give a fantastic service, we look after our clients much better than the UK or the US, we are a serious profession. We look after people and we care for them,” Singh said.
Harding-Davis disagreed and said an industry could not be a profession unless the community accepted it as a profession.
“You’re not a profession unless the community accepts that we’re a profession and that’s the definition of a profession. And we’re a long, long way from the community believing that we are and we’re trying,” he said.
Singh noted that the mainstream press never had anything good to say about the financial advice industry.
“We’re supposedly ripping people off and stuffing them up and I’m sick of hearing that from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian,” Singh said.
“We’re so self-deprecating and I don’t know a planner that doesn’t have the best intentions and does not care for their client – there are very few of them that don’t.
“You have doctors and lawyers who don’t have a clue and hang on they’re a profession. You’re sitting next to me and you run a dealer group but why don’t you believe it.”
