Hello! It’s been a while so please bear with me while I reacquaint myself with writing this piece for Money Marketing. I can’t quite believe my last Editor’s View was for June 2022.
Returning to work and reading over Lois’s cover feature got me thinking about my first paid job.
I still look back fondly on my time at WHSmith. The run-up to Christmas was always a busy part of the year. One thing that surprised me, though, was how the back-to-school period seemed even busier.
Adviser ARs — has much changed for you? Will the additional rules cause problems?
It was pure chaos. Parents would put overflowing baskets on the counter and I would scan the items and worry when I had to say out loud how much it all came to.
Most of them didn’t seem to bat an eyelid. They were seasoned pros by the looks of it.
The list of required items seemed to go on forever. And, as I came to realise over the years, most of those parents would end up back in the shop in the coming weeks to buy even more, or replace things that had mysteriously gone missing.
I’m sure many of you with children have encountered something similar. How do you feel now the summer holidays are over?
As we may or may not breathe a sigh of relief as children return to school, Money Marketing looks at the extra homework advice networks have been handed by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Tenet Group has offloaded its ARs after a review. Was the extra homework too much to handle?
In a bid to improve the appointed representative (AR) regime, the regulator introduced some new rules and now requires more information from principal firms.
Admittedly, some don’t view it as too burdensome and claim it hasn’t caused much concern. Others take a different view.
Adviser ARs — has much changed for you? Will the additional rules alter how some companies decide to operate? Quite possibly.
Has it already happened? I can’t say for sure but, just before we went to print, Tenet Group revealed it was offloading its ARs as a result of a strategic review. Arguably, other things may have been at play here. There seem to have been several changes at the group in recent months. A leadership overhaul was a fairly significant one.
As part of the latest announcement, ARs of the Tenet wealth and investment network will be offered a “fully supported transfer” to The Openwork Partnership.
Meanwhile, its mortgage network, TenetLime, has also been sold.
Money Marketing looks at the extra homework advice networks have been handed by the Financial Conduct Authority
“The strategic review concluded a transformation of the group was necessary to secure the required scale and diverse revenue streams to remain viable,” Tenet said in a statement.
It also cited significant change in the industry, including external forces such as “consolidation, increased regulation, digitisation, new technology expense and the broader inflationary environment”.
Was the extra homework just too much to handle?
Katey Pigden is editor of Money Marketing. Contact her at: katey.pigden@moneymarketing.co.uk
This article featured in the September 2023 edition of MM.
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