More than 500 adviser firms contact FCA with Covid-19 queries

The advisers got in touch with the regulator for a variety of reasons, including requesting information about Covid-19 and regulated firms, notifying the FCA of operational difficulties they were facing, or about having difficulty fulfilling their regulatory obligations, such as completing regulatory reports.

The 517 firms that contacted the regulator excludes firms that responded to the Covid-19 survey, which was sent to firms in June and probed, among other things, firms' financial resilience.

4 Financial Planning founder and financial planner Ian Else did not make contact with the regulator about coronavirus, nor, despite being a newly launched firm, did he receive the Covid-19 questionnaire.  

He was not impressed with the regulator's communication during the pandemic, noting he "hadn't noticed them" until it was "in need of a blank cheque signed for the levies."

On the other hand, Martin Bamford, who is a former IFA and founder of Bamford Media, a marketing firm that works with advisers, felt it was difficult to criticise the regulator too harshly.

He said: "The pandemic caught everyone off guard and prompted a huge amount of work. The logistical challenges the regulator must have faced in switching to a remote way of working must have been significantly greater than those presented to small businesses.

"A key plank of working with the regulator is openness and transparency, so IFAs must pick up the phone or send an email to the FCA if there are any factors which require notification. With the worst of the Covid-19 economic impact still to come, I would urge any adviser facing financial or operational difficulties to raise this with the FCA as early as possible."

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