24th April 2014

Adviser letter of the week

Am I a paranoid Luddite or merely suspicious of this move! How long will it be before Skandia invite “my” clients to complete their own risk profile and in turn cancel my fees? If this is not an explicit invitation then perhaps it will be implicit within the Customer Centre proposition.

Fund switching – with a more client-friendly process for those with Skandia Life Assurance products.

I have already had experience of a client declining a fee agreement and then completing an unadvised fund switch without so much as a word back to me via Skandia. By the way this related to a collective investment and not a life policy! 

We’ll also write to clients who are regular users of our existing online services to tell them what they need to do, including providing some extra information for our enhanced security levels. We’ll send you a copy of that communication too.

 Skandia need to be mindful of whose clients they will be writing to. They are in fact “my clients” and not Skandia clients. I’m a great fan of Skandia but we need strict rules and constraints on this service. The term mission creep was coined when the USA army in Vietnam turned from peacekeepers into warmongers. We ought not to have a process that facilitates the diminution of the advice process, especially when our advice is built on our service proposition.  I will be more cautious & refrain for entering client emails and contact numbers on the site. I would also like to see a robust anti poaching anti solicitation agreement as part of this proposition.

If you use Skandia & share these concerns then please pass these concerns onto your broker consultant. 

Best regards

SIMON MANSELL

Adviser Letter of the Week