It seems to go on and on doesnt it? The M.P.’s expenses thing I mean. Detail after detail comes out, and then some more, and then some more after that.
I then noticed that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) who oversee financial planners like ourselves, have awarded themselves £33m in pay rises and bonuses.
They explain that their “talent management initiative” means that they need to pay this to keep good staff. This is the same organisation who massively failed to check on the banks properly etc etc.
Now, with the European Elections, we see that M.E.P.’s are also knee deep in corruption. Some of the figures here are truly astounding. Here are a few examples:
- they can claim up to £363,000 a year in expenses, with no receipts required
- pension rights up to £30k pa over 5 years
- over £40k in “transition payments” when they leave office
- apparently, from this month, they will be getting an increase of almost 50% in their pay of £61,820 pa
To cap it all, it seems that their expenses have not been audited for a decade or more! You could not make it up!
So, weary to the back teeth with all this, I then noticed an article about complaints regarding financial advisers and banks etc. I know, I know, I should have gone to the pub, and ignored it! But I didnt and so here is a brief summary.
The Financial Ombudsman Service received 127,471 new complaints last year. Of these, only 5,100 complaints were against Independent Financial Advisers, and of these, only 30% were upheld.
Banks accounted for 59% of complaints, with a huge 69% of cases being upheld against their salespeople. The next significant percentage was Insurance & Investment providers at 11% of complaints.
So, in numbers, Banks had 51,893 complaints upheld against them. Whereas Independent Financial Advisers had 1,530 complaints upheld against them.
Now in our opinion that is 1,530 too many, but the difference is huge. By the way, you would think that knowing these figures the FSA would concentrate their efforts on Banks. Unfortunately, that has not happened so far.
Now I know I should not be surprised at these figures. I have been around long enough to see some horrendous examples of how the banks work, but when you see these stories all coming out together, it really makes you want to scream.
The common denominators are all there of course:
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short termism and greed
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a sales (me me) culture
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lack of integrity and respect (for themselves and us)
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no pride in a job well done
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judging us by their own standards (we would be corrupt as well if we had the chance)
Looking back now to 2002, I am so glad that I made a stand and took the plunge to leave the Medical Sickness Society’s salesforce. This enabled me to be fee based and impartial, truly working for the client to help them achieve their goals in life.
I’ll stop there. My daughter is pushing me out the back door for a go on the trampoline, Then Im off to the pub!
