IFA, Nick Bamford, executive director, Informed Choice said trust, sharing similar business values and excellent customer feedback are all key to forging strong referral relationships at an Aviva roundtable on building intermediary business yesterday.
Dev Malle, sales & marketing director at network Personal Touch Financial Services, said it’s a complex relationship to get working properly.
“It’s about trust and a tripartite legal agreement. We use a legal technical hub so brokers can take on clients, apportion commission splits and work out the impact on retention levels, so, there is more to it than just trust,” said Malle.
William Johnson, spokesman from IFA, The Oval Group, said when RDR comes into effect from 1 January 2013, mortgage referrals will mean merging a fee-based model with mortgage advisers commission-based models, which will be hard for firms to reconcile.
“Proc fee remunerated advice has a very different feel to fee-based financial advice. That’s actually quite a difficult one to resolve,” he said.
However, Malle said there are less brokers than ever before and consumers are more in need of advice offering a “massive opportunity.”
But he warned post-RDR, brokers cannot be “all things to all people.”