FINANCIAL planning and the financial services industry owe much to the risk side of the industry.
Despite the fact that investments and risk seem to occupy different spaces in the market, and in many cases are offered independently of each other, they are related.
Those who have been involved with financial services for the last two decades will recall the growth of the managed investments market and the development of financial planning into its present shape from the early days when many products came from risk houses.
While there has been a watershed change in the quality, type and range of product available to investors since that time, the need for clients of financial planners to hold adequate risk cover, alongside their investments, remains undiminished.
And it is on this basis thatMoney ManagementandDexx&rhave created the Adviser Choice Risk Awards. These awards cover term and total and permanent disability, disability income and trauma products, as well as an overall winner named as the Risk Company of the Year.
Long-term readers ofMoney Managementwill be familiar with its long-standing and pre-eminent funds management awards conducted each year since 1987, and these newly instituted risk awards will follow in the same tradition.
Using criteria established by a panel of advisers and research compiled by Dexx&r (see page 19),Money Managementhas highlighted those risk houses and products that are deserving of extra attention and as such have been singled out for this award.
All these groups have passed muster from an adviser perspective and as suchMoneyManagementwould like to congratulate them, and most particularly the winners, for taking a place in the inauguralMoney Management/Dexx&r Adviser Choice Risk Awards.
