The Financial Dispute Resolution Service has reported a high intake of advisers has taken up membership with the Service.
It claimed that over 600 advisers became new members in the last 12 months, of which 90 percent are life insurance advisers.
FDRS adviser membership numbers have now reached 835 out of 1,928 total members.
FDRS Client Director, Trevor Slater, attributed the growth in membership to their package offering to members and offering groups of advisers a lower fee, which became effective at the start of 2018.
The Service also now provides webinars every month specifically for financial advisers and offer a helpline for members.
Slater, who has worked in the past as a financial adviser, joined FDRS in August 2017 and is highly connected within the industry.
“We are out there, at the national advisers conference. We attend individual group conferences, we go and meet advisers and listen to what they have to say,” he said.
“We try to really work hard to give them the tools to resolve their complaints themselves.”
“One of the things we’ve been led to believe that will be part of the licensing requirement, is that you’ll have to have a compliant internal complaint process that’s audited and signed off,’ explained Slater, who was one of the co-authors of the New Zealand standard on internal complaints handling.
Slater said FDRS will be offering an updated version of an internal complaints process manual and is to carry out audits and sign off on members’ internal complaints process.
“It’s going to be a challenging time for advisers – there’s a lot to think about and a lot to do and we just want to make the complaint handling part really easy,” he said.