Which rules govern Ifa’s please?

Supercalafragalistic

IA bit of a strange one here, but if anyone here is an ifa can you tell me , do IFA’s have to follow the fca’s “The Principles’ (or is that just for product providers?) or do IFA’s have to follow the fca ‘conduct of business rules’ please? Or maybe both?
Thanks in case someone knows!

SonOf

All regulated firms have to follow the FCA principles as well as COB in the areas they are involved in. There are others that can apply as well as the FCA guidelines are spread out (something it recognises based on what it said in October 2019). Many of the useful bits of information that come from the regulator are in technical bulletins. These expand upon the guidelines and requirements and removes a lot of things that are open to interpretation.

Malthusian

As per the responses to the same question in the LCF thread, you would probably get more helpful responses if you ask us the underlying question.

If you are really only interested in whether IFAs have to follow both PRIN and COBS, and there is no other issue behind it, I will close nominations early and award this thread Most Boring Question Anybody Asked In 2020.

Supercalafragalistic

Malthusian wrote: »

As per the responses to the same question in the LCF thread, you would probably get more helpful responses if you ask us the underlying question.

If you are really only interested in whether IFAs have to follow both PRIN and COBS, and there is no other issue behind it, I will close nominations early and award this thread Most Boring Question Anybody Asked In 2020.

I had not seen the reply and sorry about the boring nature of my question... It was regards to wrong advice from an adviser who suggested the onus is on the product provider, whereas someone else suggested to me that certain rules are incumbent upon the adviser...was just trying to see which rules apply to whom.

masonic

Supercalafragalistic wrote: »

I had not seen the reply and sorry about the boring nature of my question... It was regards to wrong advice from an adviser who suggested the onus is on the product provider, whereas someone else suggested to me that certain rules are incumbent upon the adviser...was just trying to see which rules apply to whom.

The adviser is responsible for the advice that they provide. It is not necessarily wrong to suggest the onus is on the product provider to provide whatever it is you want.

If you were a little less evasive I'm sure you'd get a helpful answer. It is pointless to make sweeping generalisations about the roles of parties and then try to apply them to a highly specific situation. You will inevitably draw erroneous conclusions from what you are told.

Malthusian

Supercalafragalistic wrote: »

I had not seen the reply and sorry about the boring nature of my question... It was regards to wrong advice from an adviser who suggested the onus is on the product provider, whereas someone else suggested to me that certain rules are incumbent upon the adviser...was just trying to see which rules apply to whom.

You are likely to get much more helpful responses if you give full details of what the issue is. Instead of trying to frame a vague question in a way that guarantees the response "yes, you're right".

He could still be right about the onus of whatever it is being on the product provider, even though both PRIN and COBS applies to advisers. I doubt he thinks that PRIN doesn't apply to him even if he is in the wrong.

If you insist on not giving further details then one option in any situation like this is to make a formal complaint to both the adviser and the product provider. Either one will offer satisfactory redress and one will say "not our fault guv" in which case you accept the redress. Or both blame the other in which case you take both complaints to the Ombudsman and let them decide. One of your complaints will be baseless but that doesn't matter to you as both are free.

This is probably an unnecessarily complicated solution but it is the only one I can suggest if you don't know who's at fault and don't want to give other people the information they need to work it out.

SonOf

It was regards to wrong advice from an adviser who suggested the onus is on the product provider, whereas someone else suggested to me that certain rules are incumbent upon the adviser...was just trying to see which rules apply to whom.

Most allegations of wrong advice actually have little to do with the rules. Technicalities are only occasionally an issue with complaints. Usually its case handlers viewing a case for compliance reasons (either in house, third party or FCA) that focus on technicalities as they are looking at the process as well as the advice. The FOS and complaints process is about the outcome and whether that was suitable or not.

You will sometimes see complaint outcomes mention some missing documentation but they do not uphold the complaint because of it if the thing missing has no impact the outcome.

There was a recent complaint outcome published where a provider gave duff information to the adviser and the FOS rejected the complaint against the adviser. We can only assume a complaint was then made against the firm but the published decision against the adviser didnt say as much.

Each complaint is looked at on its own merits and there is usually no point trying to look up FCA guidelines or principles to see if there is a technicality issue.