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Departing AIFA boss blasts industry in-fighting
06 September 2010
Outgoing AIFA director general Chris Cummings has lambasted in-fighting as the industry’s “weakness”. Cummings, director general of the trade body since 2005, quit in June to become the first chief executive of TheCityUK. While he believes the independent advice sector will “come into its own” post RDR, he says the industry continues to be held back by internal conflict. “I always thought in-fighting was a great shame, a weakness,” he told Professional Adviser, IFAonline's print title. “I remember sitting in a room with one certified and one chartered adviser. But rather than talk about how the world of advice could be improved, there was too much focus on which, of certified or chartered, is better. “If a consumer had been sat in the room, they would not have known what they were talking about. People should be rallying around the advice flag.” During Cummings’ five-year tenure as AIFA director general, membership of the association as a percentage of IFAs has risen from 60% to 85%. He says his focus was always on having a regular dialogue with the FSA, but also on “raising the game” beyond the regulator to Westminster and, later, Brussels. “I was fortunate to get the job just at the time of de-polarisation,” he says. “There was uncertainty around multi-ties and the industry was really at loggerheads about how it should all come together. “IFAs had come a long way in the years before I joined AIFA, but advisers were still tarred with a poor reputation. A lot of policymakers did not understand what an IFA was, so we were very focused on dealing with the FSA and the Treasury. But it was also essential we gained influence at a European level.” Cummings says he is a “keen advocate” of the RDR but fears it has lost sight of its central objective: to increase consumer access to advice. “We were very happy to support it. People could not see a reason to save, or to visit an IFA, and the RDR was about turning that around. “It has been successful in driving up standards and changing the way advisers are remunerated but, to me, the regulatory tragedy of all this is that the goal of helping more people has somehow completely dropped off the list.” Cummings is set to leave AIFA next Thursday 9 September and will start his new role on 13 September. Published by IFAOnline
