Hero
For lenders who rely on the intermediary market, one of the outstanding heroes of the last two years has to be the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries. Despite recent criticism of its management structure, Chris Cummings and his team have had an outstanding impact on our industry and now represent over 70 per cent of eligible members.
The trade body is influencing government, regulators and providers alike – and long may that continue. Our industry needs professional well-informed advisers capable of confronting the battles that we will face not only with the FSA but from Europe (70 per cent of our legislation currently emanates out of Brussels). I for one think that its 18,000 members are in excellent hands and that can only be of benefit to us all.
Zero
‘Nil point’ must go to all those advisers and providers who do not see the bigger picture. I have always believed that an adviser’s future is in the hands of their current clients and that they have a duty to establish a long-term relationship if they are to be perceived by the public as being ‘value for money’.
Indeed the stereotypical image of untrustworthy professionals who give financial advice (advisers and providers alike) is, as we know, wrong but we have to be honest it is one held by a significant number of the public.
More of us must believe we can add long-term value by embracing clients’ mortgages as a financial planning tool and just like a tradesman buys quality tools to last them all their working life so advisers should use the tools available to them to establish a lifetime relationship.
In that lifetime clients are likely to face any combination of divorce, redundancy, university costs and sickness. Providers are doing their best to bring products to the market that are designed to anticipate and deal with the impact of such events so more advisers must prepare their clients for these eventualities. As yet nowhere near enough do.
