Yesterday, BT Financial Group announced the launch of ‘Adviser View’, a new public register of financial advisers in Westpac’s salaried bank and aligned dealer group channels, alongside a new ‘advice commitment’ document and new education standards.
Speaking to ifa, BT head of advice Mark Spiers said the register is about shepherding in a “new era” in which advice is “more accessible and more transparent”, which means allowing consumers to post comments about negative experiences with advisers.
“I think consumers are very savvy, they can tell the difference between truly below-standard service and a ‘one-off’,” Mr Spiers said.
“If one of our advisers receives a poor rating then that is a great resource for us to know how better to service that adviser and whether they may need additional training.”
Mr Spiers said BT intends for the website to have an “honest” approach to content publication, with only defamatory and derogatory content to be edited out and all other “verbatim comments” to be published.
The register is currently up and running for salaried bank advisers, with authorised reps of Securitor and Magnitude to be included over time on an “opt in” basis.
“Not all of the aligned [advisers] will want to be included,” he explained, adding, however, that he is confident most are supportive of the move.
Westpac will be directing traffic to the Adviser View portal from its consumer-facing websites.
“We don’t want this to be a secret,” Mr Spiers said.
How about BT & Westpac management also release an open website to rate & comment on all their products not just FP? Would be extremely interesting reading, not only to see what trouble advisers may be having, but particularly from the public who may have been marketed to direct without an adviser involved…
Imbeciles in management obviously – hope the BT planners push back hard and wipe the idiot who decided to come up with it.
Next you know the crazies inside FPA will jump on the bandwagon and do one
This is pandering to the ISA & public perception and a bit like an unpopular child trying to look good when the popular kid is in trouble, they are clearly & simply doing a basic brain dead exercise to make themselves look better due to the CBA having issues.
No other profession would even consider this as it is extremely unprofessional. Amazing and breath taking in it’s small minded stupidity! Let’s see how long until it blows up in their faces – would laugh if they receive an inordinate amount of shadow shoppers by the ISA who lambast their adviser /Magnitude force…
Dear Westpac
Thank you for making my job so much easier I now will be able to contact all your advisers directly to fill my recruitment targets. Whats more I will be able to work out who are the good advisers and the duds based on the comments. I will recruit the good ones and you can keep the duds for your customers and ASIC to sort out.
well of course the westpac advisers will get good ratings because the clients of the aligned groups securitor etc. dont even know who owns their adviser of why they have ended up with a bt product. more smoke and mirrors from the banks
Greatest load of rubbish i have read in this Industry for a long long time, and gee there has been some corkers! but this just ridiculious, how about we set up a system to rate these Managers and there staff on all the crap we have to take at the coal face with our clients when we are let down by them, and tell me that is not an almost daily basis,lets endevour to ruin your reputations and promotional prospects for non delivery of an acceptable level of accurate service, what a Joke Westpac/BT.
I believe only real clients are able to comment via a special code provided to them by Westpac/BT etc.
will be very interesting to see how many securitor advisers sign up to this thing. not many methinks – opt in, what a joke!
How utterly ridiculous.
I totally agree with Steve in that it provides an outlet for others with certain agendas to utilise this system against advisers in general in order to push their own models.
Of course every one of those “authentic” reviews on Trip Advisor are written by “genuine guests” of the hotel aren’t they ??
Absolutely dumbstruck by the idiocy of this idea. How about we set up a register of fund managers who cant match index performance.When you invest its not like taking a holiday , and then posting the results of your experience on Trip Advisor . The clowns who thought this up should really have a good hard look at themselves
Allowing uncensored comments opens the door for internet trolling, lies, mistruths, fabrications to be attached to an adviser for ever. This has the potential to be quite dangerous to an adviser’s reputation even when they have done nothing wrong.
I wouldn’t put it past the industry super movement to post false negative comments just to further their own cause and bully their competitors. The Labor/Union movement are not exactly squeaky clean.
Unbelievable. Is that all management can come up with? Hopefully any negative comments will be a direct reflection on management not just the adviser. No doubt management will accept accolades for any positive comments.
Anyone else starting to feel like cannon fodder?