Update from Mike Fenwick

Before my more detailed comments, I wish to place on record my sincere thanks to two people - Evan Owen and Rod Leonard for the support they have given me, whilst I carried out the research against which I make the comments below.

The jury is out on whether I should thank them for encouraging me back into a world of regulatory insanity, one that I thought I had left - altho' in more recent posts here, you will have seen me say that I had started and intended to continue.

Let me first make this distinction - it is something I recorded in a very early post on here - I do not believe that all IFAs, and their actions can be defended, I do however believe in financial advice which is truly independent.

You may not have seen this article in Money Marketing:

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/adviser-news/ifas-must-break-the-pattern-of-top-down-financial-hierarchy/1018926.article

It was as Evan commented, edited from the draft I sent to MM, but it does contain two sentences which I wish to highlight - these:

As an IFA, think of the FSCS. Your survival requires you to account for your own liabilities but also pay for the failures (undetected by the regulators) of everyone else. Similarly, the public must cough up for its own liabilities and for the failures (again undetected) of the banks.

There can be no IFA who is unaware of the issues over the costs of the FSCS etc etc.

Equally there can be nobody in the UK who is unaware of the costs arising from the collapse of the Banks.

They are both issues where the innocent are asked to pay for the costs of the guilty.

I have another article to prepare for MM - in which I will start to offer suggestions as to how the FSCS could be totally reformed - apologies, but details have to wait until I have agreed the position with MM.

Now, I doubt whether most, if not all, IFAs would understand why I am targeting the issue of bank charges, but there is for me a very valid reason and it ties in with the distinction I drew above.

Good IFAs take on the problems of their clients, and broker their clients through the complexities of the financial world - it is that in that performance that they have value and add value.

In time I will attempt to show how by targeting one issue, in this case Bank charges, it is possible for IFAs, by resolving that issue for others, they can also address the issues they themselves face.

Are they same issues?

Well, here is an extract:

Referring to both the OFT and the FSA, and in particular to the waiver issued by the FSA, I ended my last post with this question:

What is it in the nature of their relationship, that allows them:

- complete control over the rights to justice of ordinary people,
- and the power to halt Courts of Justice stone dead in their tracks! Something not even Governments find easy to do.

Do IFAs feel that the FSA have complete control over their rights to justice?

Do IFAs feel that the FSA and the FOS can halt the Courts of Justice stone dead in their tracks?

And yet in that extract - I am not writing about IFAs directly, but about the millions of ordinary members of the public who have been denied their rights on this issue of bank charges.

Where is that extract from? A blog I am writing which can be found here:

http://notproven.blogspot.com/

The blog is very much work in progress, and I wish to see it finished asap. Then I will advocate the next steps - for those who are interested in restoring some sanity to the world of regulation, for themselves, AND the wider public.

Mike ...


PS: The FSA, OFT, Treasury Select Committee and others have been made aware of the blog, and whilst not yet complete I am now extending the list of those who I think need to be made aware of its existence. If any of you who are reading this post wish to advise others (who may not be on this IFADU list) of its content, please feel free to do so.