Professionalism rests on industry's shoulders: Spiers

The push to achieve professionalism in financial planning needs to go beyond planners to include all participants in the financial services industry, according to general manager of advice for BT Financial Group, Mark Spiers.

Spiers said in order to reach this, the entire industry needed to adopt a culture of professionalism, including paraplanners, fund managers, platform providers, client service officers and even call centre staff.

“I think too often we say professionalism is for the planner, and that’s true, but that is only one critical component of the environment of professionalism,” Spiers said.

Spiers said during the global financial crisis, the erosion of trust between consumers and the financial services industry was the greatest casualty across the industry globally.

“And trust is clearly the highway to professionalism,” he said.

The best way for planners to build trust with their clients, Spiers said, was to go back to basics.

“Clients look for good quality advice and good quality service and they are looking for their needs to be met,” he said.

Spiers said that from his perspective, he believes the financial services industry will definitely make the leap to a profession, but it will need to be done in a series of steps.

“Professionalism has totally been embraced by the industry and most if not all planners are developing themselves in the areas of their gaps to reflect that,” he said.