25th July 2018

Bashing the trade associations: Where have we gone wrong?

As a profession, we love our surveys.  Product providers, networks, the media and even your trade associations are regularly asking you what you think of the world in which you operate in.

The responses are then poured over, scrutinized, rehashed and presented in whatever form best suits those that carried out the survey.

The latest has been published by Money Marketing who carried out ‘exclusive research’ to determine how advisers currently perceive their own profession with their ‘Adviser Satisfaction Survey’.

The results, which largely reflect our own findings from The Heath Report 3, show that adviser firms are generally upbeat about the way the profession is perceived, as well as the immediate future of the industry.  Financial Planning is experiencing high demand, business is booming, plans are in place for expansion and the remuneration is good.

But professional bodies and trade associations did not fare particularly well, according to MM’s survey.

The PFS, the CISI, PIMFA and Libertatem were all criticised for not doing enough to support the profession.

Unfortunately, we do not know how many of the 220 respondees are actually members of any of the aforementioned organisations as MM didn’t provide that information in their article.  But the figures mentioned do broadly reflect the membership/non-membership split that we currently have. 

Money Marketing state that 14 per cent of those surveyed think that their trade associations – namely ourselves and PIMFA – are doing a good job.  The rest felt that we are not doing enough to support the profession or were unsure of how effective we are.

As our own figures would suggest that less than 15 per cent of adviser firms actually belong to a trade association, this would fall in line with the MM survey. 

So is it fair to suggest that 86 per cent of adviser firms are not signing up to a trade association because they don’t believe they are getting a good return?  Quite possibly.  But it is a two way street. 

Both Libertatem and PIMFA would argue that it is difficult to be effective without adequate funding, the vast majority of which comes from membership subscriptions. And if firms are holding back from joining a trade association because they want to wait and see how effective they can be, they are creating a self fulfilling prophecy.  An association cannot flourish without money and by not joining, advisers are hampering the association's chance of success.  In the end, advisers will only get the representation that they deserve.

Join Libertatem now from just £20 per month

The banks currently contribute towards an annual budget in excess of £275 million to spend on lobbying, representation, promotions and PR within the EU. The budget for the IFA sector is presently less than one per cent of that figure.  Small wonder that those who represent the banks are carrying out a far more effective job than we are at Government and regulatory level.

If every adviser operating today contributed just £100 to their trade association, it would give us a budget in excess of £3 million. Just imagine how much we could achieve with that sum behind us.

The hard truth is that if advisers want their trade associations to be more effective, they need to fund them by getting off the fence and actually joining them.  Only then will they discover how effective a well funded trade association can be for them.

Business Development