A new compliance solutions firm, Compliance Refinery, has launched for financial advisers.
The company provides solutions that fit with adviser businesses taking into account the technology they are using and scale sets within the business.
Compliance Refinery Director, Steven Burgess, says he sees compliance as something that is integrated into a business fully and the more effective compliance is run, the more time is freed up for the adviser to service their clients.
Compliance Refinery offers different levels of guidance, depending on the level of involvement the business is after.
Burgess said the firm can check in with an adviser business every six to twelve months to ensure compliance processes are running well and are not taking on additional risks, or they can operate within a business and report to the directors on the oversight they provide.
He said he founded the company because he noticed there were not many compliance solutions available for adviser businesses tailored to their individual needs.
With FSLAB changing the regulatory landscape for advisers, Burgess said smaller businesses need to ask themselves whether they want to spend more time on compliance and have more director responsibilities which means more time managing the business. “That all takes away from a lot of advisers’ end goal of spending more time with clients and servicing clients.”
He said some advice businesses will become financial advice providers (FAPs) or part of FAPs but all advisers will have to take an integrated look at their businesses and see what they are capable of.
“RFAs in theory are going to have the most significant change,” he noted, “…in terms of the educational and licensing requirements and then whatever the end advice process looks like from the Code.”
“RFAs in theory are going to have the most significant change…”
He said this decision-making process will cause an initial disruption as advisers figure out where they fit in, but he expects that within five years many FAPs will amalgamate in that time and this will be a quicker process than people realise.
“Once you start to operate on a larger economy of scale you have access to cheaper, better technology and marketing – even products. You can do creative things in the product space that are individual to your clients for that group,” he said.