Top 10 most influential, 2004: Sarah Brennan: the code maker
Expect fire and brimstone and all manner of damnation when the planning industry’s new code of conduct on soft dollar payment goes live next January.
The Financial Planning Association (FPA) has already warned that it will banish members who flout the code, but only after it has put them through a very public wringer by releasing their names.
And that is only a pittance compared to the treatment any financial planning group can expect at the hands of a suspicious media and increasingly active consumer lobby if they breach the code.
When the FPA was forced to act by growing consumer and regulatory scrutiny of the remuneration of financial advisers, it was Sarah Brennan, an FPA board member and industry consultant, who they largely turned to, to make the code happen.
The result was a ground-breaking set of new conventions for advisers that ban soft dollar forms of remuneration that are volume sales related, and require other payments to be disclosed publicly if they are worth over $300.
In other words, the code has the potential to change the way every financial planning and funds management group in the country does business.
Exactly how big a deal is the code, and through it, Brennan’s influence on financial planning?
Just ask the first adviser or dealer group to be caught out breaching the code.
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