‘What’s going to happen next?’: Adviser hoping for end to shifting environment

Speaking on the ifa podcast, Angus Taylor, a financial adviser with Sheffield Financial, explained how the constantly changing regulations in financial advice since the royal commission have made life difficult for advisers, and why an end to these changes is important.

“My hope for the future is there will be stability at some point,” Mr Taylor said.

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“Pre-royal commission, me and a good friend of mine, we started the business, Sheffield Financial, together and things were going well. We had a plan in place. Everything was going as planned,” he added.

“Royal commission came along and just changed everything, basically. My business partner at that point said, ‘Angus, I can’t do this anymore.’ So in 2020, I bought him out.”

Mr Taylor noted that there were a lot of advice firms that were hit much harder by the fallout of the royal commission and that Sheffield Financial was “lucky enough to be young business”.

“We were very dynamic, so we were able to move with the changes quite quickly. Our education standards were there, so we’d just done all of our education, so a little bit more on top of that wasn’t too hard for us,” he said.

“So, again, we were in a fortunate place to do it. But it was a bit of a miserable time, I hate to say, a lot of people in the community were thinking we were the bad guys, which is so against what I stand for as a financial planner. It’s our job to help people. And I guess everything happens so quickly, as you said, and now, look what happens. They’re basically [asking]: Did we do the right thing here?”

According to Mr Taylor, all financial advisers were “tarnished with the same brush” despite the vast majority operating in the right way.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the industry was clean. There was some really systemic problems that we had to clear up, which we did with a sort of machine gun approach,” he said.

“It was a very tough time and the legislation that came off the back of it, I think financial planners got the worst of it. We got the brunt of it. I literally understand why a lot of people got out of the industry, especially with the educational standards. Telling a 50-year-old adviser to go back to university, it’s a bit harsh. So, I can see how it definitely was a problem.”

Despite the ongoing changes, this time coming on the back of the Quality of Advice Review, Mr Taylor is holding out hope that the regulatory landscape gains a level of equilibrium.

“It’s crazy seeing all these changes every year. I’m really hoping for stability and I think we may get it after this,” he said.

“However, it’s hard to be a big company and build these processes and systems in place just for the changes to happen next year and then more changes the year after.

“Again, we’ve been fortunate enough, we’re a small, dynamic firm, we can make the move quickly. But, I guess I am concerned. What’s going to happen next? Every year there’s new rules and tick boxes, there’s more compliance and more loops we’ve got to jump through. Hey, I’d just like to see it go back to the core of just being real simple, just adding great value.”

To hear more from Angus Taylor, tune in here.