Derek Bradley, CEO of Panacea Adviser

Derek Bradley is CEO of Panacea Adviser, the online community and resource for financial advisers.

Related topics:  In The Spotlight
Amy Loddington
27th June 2014
In The Spotlight

FR: What are the big challenges and obstacles facing the advisory community over the next 18-24 months?

There are so many it’s difficult to keep track but the main ones are costs, regulation, professional indemnity, the removal of trail commission, their proposition itself – the list goes on.

Across the board costs keep rising with little indication of a good return on investment for firms. As always regulation evolves, in that it becomes more complicated and appears to be increasingly over the top – there is little understanding from an adviser’s perspective, why this might be the case.

The PI market is hardening and for any firms with potential toxic baggage, or time served, renewal can be challenging, this year maybe more so. The removal of legacy trail beyond 2016 is now in the control of providers as the FCA has washed its hands of the matter - the possible effects of this could be catastrophic for some.

Finally, most firms have segmented clients in a post-RDR world but challenges remain around proposition offerings to those remaining clients.

FR: Panacea has focused a lot on social media usage – why is this communication channel so important to advisers?

The simple answer is that we live in an increasingly ‘time pressed’ world, and because of this consumers turn more to technology to access information. With social media, for example, the biggest source of information is accessed from your social peer group. For those firms who are genuinely engaged on social media and building their own peer groups of clients, the rewards are considerable. In this day and age clients will find you, not the other way around and therefore in my opinion if you do not engage with social media, you will not have a business in five years’ time.

This is why we are actively supporting advisers in the social media space. We have recently published a social media guide which was written with considerable input from social media experts and those advisers who are currently at the forefront of this medium. We have also teamed up with the website, Advisertech, to offer Panacea members access to expert insight on a range of online marketing and social media issues. It all helps add to knowledge and skills advisers can use in order to get the most out of social media.

FR: Panacea seems to be more strongly rooted in the traditional financial adviser world, but what support can you offer those active in mortgages, secured loans, bridging, etc?

We are certainly not ones to stand still and I will say that new areas of the site are being developed all the time. We recently rolled out a mortgage area, and we will also be looking at DFMs and EFFs, introducing tools and education offerings in the coming months as well as useful guides, like our latest one on the removal of trail commission.

FR: Panacea is definitely a community of advisers however would you say the advisory community is a strongly bonded one that works together to further its aims?

Advisers are a bunch which could be described as disparate, desperate and often failing to consider the strengths that solidarity can bring. The trade body (APFA) should have much more support than it does, but advisers are very critical of what it has or has not done in key areas. There is strength in numbers and although we have been asked frequently to create a trade body from Panacea, we do not have the resource or desire to do so. There is a perfectly good body in place that could be an awful lot better simply by being more assertive, perhaps even agressive. These simple actions would generate much more support amongst the advisory community and would bolster numbers which of course adds further strength to trade body and it’s ability to get things done.

FR: What advice would you have to new advisers entering the sector in the months ahead?

Firstly, make sure you have enough capital to make it work (not just the minimum needed). Secondly, use all the available technology to the max, and ultimately make sure your proposition will actually work and will deliver value to your clients and make you money. And finally, make sure you have a thick newspaper down the back of your trousers in case the headmaster calls from his ‘study’ in Canary Wharf!

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