IFA - Can they live abroad and serve UK clients?

seekingclarification

I live abroad and would like to pursue a career in financial advisory. Does anyone know if an independent financial advisor can live abroad and serve UK clients via online meeting tools? 

DullGreyGuy

Which country? There will most likely be local compliance requirements too

Ditzy_Mitzy

I can't imagine there's a law against it, but the compliance environment would render such an undertaking almost impossible.  Clients would be required to send all sorts of personal information offshore and you would have to return it, meaning there would be data processing in another country.  That sort of thing isn't liked by the regulators.

UK financial services are still steam powered to a large extent, too.  Much correspondence is exchanged by post and fax.  How would you deal with that abroad?  How would paraplanning and administration be done offshore?  What about clients who wish to meet?  Lots do, in fact the role of the financial adviser is geared largely towards real meetings with clients, at least in the UK.  You have to consider who has money, demographically speaking, and who seeks financial advice.  The answer is the elderly and the retired.  They like doing things the old fashioned way, which quite often entails going to an old fashioned office in an old fashioned town for some old fashioned tea and biscuits.  It's an inconvenience for them, but necessary when you've got a million or so's life savings at stake.  I know that I'd want to be able to trust someone if I was investing that much; real premises and telephone numbers are the absolute minimum.  

Finally, of course, you would be at a tremendous disadvantage because you wouldn't be able to network.  The consumer side of the sector - the collectives, protections and pensions - is a small world and people tend to know each other.  Advisers are rivals, of course, but many are friends and much business is done at conferences and in the bars of country hotels.  Unfortunately, working abroad is going to give you no chance to do any of that.  

Marcon

seekingclarification said:

I live abroad and would like to pursue a career in financial advisory. Does anyone know if an independent financial advisor can live abroad and serve UK clients via online meeting tools? 

The FCA has no jurisdiction outside the UK, so most non-UK based financial advisory firms (or individuals) are not regulated to provide advice in the UK.

ACG

As a mortgage broker, I know that I can not submit any applications whilst abroad. Some lenders even block foreign IP addresses for instance. 

There are data protection issues and also legal contract issues. 

Could you maybe have an administrator/paraplanner to action your requests based in the UK? 

If you want to set up, you would likely need to go under a network so it might be worth checking with some networks.