news & lobbying

Insurers Unite On Adviser Charging Approach.

Aegon, Friends Life, Legal & General, Prudential and Scottish Life have joined forces and produced a set of principles for advisers and providers to ease the facilitation of adviser and consultancy charging payments.

The providers' ten generic principles

1. The AC agreement is between the client and the adviser firm, not the adviser.
2. The CC agreement is between the employer and the adviser firm, not the adviser.
3. AC/CC taken from pensions can only pay for advice and services on pensions.
4. Providers will communicate to the market the products through which they will facilitate AC and CC, and the AC and CC structures available for these products.
5. Before any ACC or CC can be facilitated, the adviser firm and the provider need to re-agree terms of business.
6. AC/CC instructions will capture any initial, ongoing or ad-hoc AC/CC and stipulate that it will be the gross amount (i.e. including VAT). The CC instruction can be at scheme or at individual level.
7. Providers do not require information with regard to AC/CC which they are not facilitating.
8. The provider will comply with AC/CC instructions once validated, in a timely manner.
9. Advisers or employers will communicate services/changes to services being provided to the client or individual, in a timely manner.
10. Advisers will keep their own VAT records for AC/CC. Providers will not keep these records.

According to Steven Cameron, head of regulatory strategy at Aegon, the approach may help to avoid problems for advisers and providers.