One of the main questions I keep getting asked is how do I balance commercial decisions to ensure the business succeeds with maintaining and surpassing compliance requirements?
I’ll be very honest and say that when we first became authorised and were bringing the business up to the standards expected by the regulator that there was a constant battle between sales and compliance to ensure we were complying with the rules whilst not putting up barriers that stopped us doing business. Many a time I had to deal with conversations that said, “well broker ’A’ isn’t asking for that or doing that”.
Now I’m not saying that I don’t still have those conversations from time to time, but I do see a significant shift in the culture of the business where people now question whether they are doing things right rather than why they have to do things that way in the first place. More importantly I’m seeing us now winning business on the back of doing things that some of our competitors don’t.
As an example, I recently had a network member phone me and say that a customer had chosen to use him because of the information he had provided in his indication of terms and also the fact that he had asked the customer for authority for the funder to undertake a search. Where as our competitor had just sent an email with the figures, which the customer said didn’t tell him anything about what the broker did, how he got paid, anything about the product he had chosen and when the competitor said he had an acceptance in place the customer was shocked because he hadn’t accepted the quote or given him authority for the funder to undertake the search.
This just highlights to me that customers quite rightly expect more form brokers these days, they understand their rights and they want things done the right way.
I titled this “Making regulation work for you” and the only way you will ever do that is when you embrace the regulations and see that they can benefit your business.
Mike Geddes
Compliance Director
