Adviser Workshop: What last-minute checks do you need to make for RDR?

Emma Ames (pictured), Calum Cameron and Kevin Gillibrand describe the final provisions they are making as the RDR deadline approaches.

Emma Ames

Co-director, Cathedral Financial Management

We thought we were more than prepared for the retail distribution review (RDR) and it would not be a problem. It was not until September when we realised how much paperwork was needed to implement those changes. It has been a bit of a shock and extremely time-consuming.

We had to go directly to providers to find out how they were operating adviser charging because they are all very different. They have different administrative procedures and they request different things. We are spending hours finding out what each provider wants.

Revising the terms of business

We have also been working on communicating changes to clients because their method of payment will change: each client agreement has previously been on a bespoke basis. We have to understand and recognise that giving up our time in order to explain this is worth it to keep this inked and secured for the future.

Cathedral is in the process of revising its terms of business. We set out to reword it and include our fee menu. It is a massive task and we want it worded correctly from a compliance perspective, but we also want it to be consumer-friendly.

Also, we don’t want it to be something we just whipped up from a Financial Services Authority template. We want ours to stand out because clients are going to be using this as a guide to what we do and charge.

One encouraging thing is that no clients have objected to the different way they will be paying us.

More importantly, we increased our fees for the first time in 10 years and very few clients have objected to this.