The declared intention of the Conservatives is to scrap the FSA if they win the next election. The effect of this statement has apparently caused some problems with recruitment at the FSA and has raised questions over whether this would spell the end for the RDR proposals – or at least result in a delay. Whatever the merits of the arguments for and against this move, the likely reality is that the proposed ‘Consumer Protection Authority’ (CPA) will have the same underlying objectives and strategy as that of the FSA. In addition, the most qualified people to carry out the job are already likely to work for the FSA – we could debate the probability of who will fill the senior positions, but the majority of personnel are almost certain to simply transfer from one organisation to another (or perhaps multiple others)!

So, what about the implications for RDR? Anyone thinking that this would be abandoned will have to put aside such ‘wishful’ thinking after Mark Hoban MP – shadow financial secretary to the Treasury – has written to clarify the position saying:

“The RDR is a matter for the FSA and as a consumer focussed initiative, it will pass to the Consumer Protection Authority as the body which will take over the regulation of the IFA community.

So the change in the regulatory structure should not affect neither the progress of the RDR nor the timetable.”

The proposals that have been debated throughout the RDR have been fundamental – long-term – objectives of not just this regulator, but previous incarnations too. It therefore goes without saying that the next ‘nameplate’ above the door will almost certainly wish to adopt and implement the current proposals.

Manufacturers and distributors (along with the various supporting suppliers), should assume that they will need to work to the same plan and timescales for RDR, including the move towards a fee based business model and ensuring that they undertake the training & development to achieve the QCA level 4 benchmark qualifications in time. Three years may sound like a long time, but as for the teams of builders and athletes preparing for the Olympics, the deadline of 2012 is ticking remorselessly closer. They and we should adopt the philosophy of not putting off until tomorrow what could and should be done today…

Since AT8 started over three years ago, we’ve tried to embrace technology within our own enterprise as we think it important to ‘practise what we preach’.

We use internet hosted email services, blogs and newer social networking tech like Twitter and are always keeping an eye on new innovations that are relevant and that we think are not too flippant or faddish.

As all of us are away from the office a great deal and one area that has always been a bit of a struggle has been creating, checking and publishing documents, either for our clients or for public consumption – endless emails to-ing and fro-ing from individuals, attempting to keep in some sort of sequence and ensuring compliance with corporate style guidelines etc.

We needed to find a way of being able to manage the process better and searched for a web-based solution to help – now, within a more conventional office environment tools such as Microsoft Sharepoint have the ability to offer document management and control but as we don’t have our own dedicated infrastructure, that wouldn’t help us. We wanted to have a virtual document repository with full control and versioning – there are a number out there, but we settled on a service called huddle. Huddle has a range of service options, from free (with advertising) to a top flight offering that provides customisation and branding coupled with a range of storage capacities. Huddle helps us by notifying when documents are uploaded to it, tracking versions and owners and informing team members when documents are ready to be approved. Approvals can be sought from any number of individuals in the team, with document locking when one team member has ‘booked’ it out for amendment.

Since using huddle, we have been able to create a definitive master document library which goes someway to prevent the tendency for people to hoard their own versions (that may or not be inline with company style guidelines) – it certainly seems to have enhanced our productivity.

Another great example of an innovative, cloud-based solution.

With the huge market profile of the leading CRM vendors to the IFA marketplace like IntelliFlo and 1st The Exchange it is easy to forget the other players in the market place, yet there are some good applications out there beyond the 2 leading applications. That is not to say these two aren’t good applications in themselves. They are functionally very rich, backed by strong companies and led my good management teams but it always useful to have options. The market is actually very crowded – one distributor told me they reviewed 23 systems before making a choice – It is unusual to need to look that far and wide as the time taken to do so is disproportionate to the benefit in all but the largest projects – but it is worth looking at the top 5 or 6 players to get a fuller picture of the market place.

So who else is worth considering?

One company I think often overlooked is Plum. Plum doesn’t have the sales muscle of its largest rivals so won’t get involved in some of the larger tender processes out there and as a result has a much lower profile than its competitors. However it is a functionally rich system that has just had a facelift and is looking very good. If you talk to the product providers who integrate to them they are often cited among the most nimble and first to adopt new standards. Smaller companies with 5 advisers or so would do well to look at this as an option.

Senro from Solution 4 is another company sometimes overlooked. Senro is used by a number of the Openwork Advisers and is a good little application. Its usability is high and they have a real focus on how brokers can get the most out of their system – adding extra services such as data entry for paper based commission forms, where they take on the hassle of typing in the paper commission sheets into their system. Currently Senro is more focused on the mortgage market place due to its heritage and the integrations it has in place. Put they have some really exciting plans and come 2010 they will have a strong, ASP offering.

In contrast to Senro, True Potential get a lot of market attention. They have a big sales force who I believe are commission only and therefore hungry and pushing their message hard. To be fair they have a nice application and it’s a SaaS type solution (as is Senro) and the market needs a credible SaaS solution to rival IntelliFlo’s dominance here. For me True Potential is easy to either rule in or out as their business model is so different to the others. If you want to pay as a percentage of your income rather than a flat licence fee then this is very a persuasive option. Paying a percentage fee enables your costs to scale up and down with your success which is very tempting in today’s market – but in making the decision be conscious that the fees scale up as well as down and you will be tied in for a number of years.

There are many other vendors worthy of consideration – too many to discuss in detail here. If however you do want more detail then AT8 provide a brief profile on some of the leaders under our Infoblog series in our library. A more detailed report is available for sale as well – for more information email marketing@at8-group.com.

No procurement review would be complete without IntelliFlo or 1st The Exchange but these are not the only options and the addition of another couple of firms in a procurement decision is highly recommended.