During a Q&A session at the Sesame Symposium in London, a number of senior figures within the industry insisted they had been working behind the scenes to highlight RDR issues.
Simon Massey, CEO of Scottish Widows, said: “You probably don’t realise how much is going on behind the scenes and often playing these things out in the public domain won’t get the same result as if you can actually influence and talk to the powers behind the scenes.
“So it may appear that we are just rolling along with it but I can assure you from my perspective, and I suspect the same is true with other members of the panel here, there is a lot that is going on behind the scenes.
“You will not win arguments by exposing people in newspaper headlines. You will win arguments by cogent arguments behind the scenes and I suspect that is what we are all doing in our own different way.”
However, David Etherington, CEO of Zurich, warned about the scale of changes being made to the industry and the challenge facing advisers.
He said: “If you have just sunk on the Titanic, which is what we have done coming out of this economic crisis, then being asked to run up Everest the following day is a little bit bizarre.
“We have lobbied aggressively with politicians in the Lords and before the election and there is a lot of support for the view this industry must be helped.
“It cannot, in the words of one of the Lords, be left to become ‘another British Leyland’.”
Meanwhile, Peter Mann, CEO of Skandia, was keen to not raise expectations of any significant changes from existing proposals.
He said: “My feeling about the possibility of the government turning volte face is small. I think there are a number of issues that they may well address through the parliamentary hearing.
“What we need to do is try and get them to understand the correlation that they think exists between qualifications and good advice is not a direct correlation. What actually drives good advice is intent and you cannot regulate that because if you want to do a bad job you will.
“I think we might be too late but we need to try to drive that. I think the best that we can do is find an acceptable regime.”
Key Speakers on the Sesame Panel
- David Etherington, Zurich
- Mike Kellard, AXA
- Otto Thoresen, Aegon
- Steve Groves, Partnership
- Graham Harvey, Friends Provident
- Simon Massey, Scottish Widows
- Peter Mann, Skandia
