Financial adviser Alan Lakey confesses to a peculiar hobby: scouring Ombudsman decisions to understand its process. Here, he outlines three protection cases with arguable outcomes and urges his peers: make sure you take heed of FOS decisions...
Advice is an elastic process, whereby it is fair to say that if ten advisers are provided with an identical set of client circumstances, they are likely to produce a number of versions of ‘best advice’. In a reasonable world this would not create problems, but in today’s turmoil of opportunism, rampant claims management companies and questionable ombudsman adjudications, it pays to keep tabs on regulatory thinking. Let’s be clear here: the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is a regulatory body and its preferences and idiosyncrasies expose advisers to summary judgement, effectively di...
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