IFA "United We Stand!"

IFAs have been around in Singapore since the Financial Adviser Act was enacted in 2001. We are licensed individually by MAS to advise on Life Policies and Collective Investment Schemes. We represent the clients by ensuring that they get better value and advice. We are very focused on providing proper Financial Planning Services to ensure plans implemented are aligned with needs. We diligently read and analyse client's investment portfolio to ensure that they are able to achieve better returns via constant rebalancing and reallocation.

Having been part of the FA industry, I observed that the IFAs in Singapore don't seems to grow fast enough and they are not able to attract and retain people in it. The market share of businesses brought in by IFAs in Singapore remain small with only around 6%. The growth is slow and the numbers seems to be stagnant.

The benefits of engaging an IFA for long term is so much better than engaging an RM or a tied agent. An RM are more of transactional type of adviser and their concern for clients will not be for long term, an agent is not able to properly adopt the proper investment stragegies needed and that they can only sell what they carry regardless if its of the best value for the client.

What I feel is that IFAs in Singapore are not united and strong enough. We are not able to innovate and reach out to the public. Each of us have limited resources and we aer too scattered. There are so much ignorance and misunderstandings among Singaporeans about an IFA even though we have been around for 7 years. All the FAs in Singapore don't seems to talk to each other, there are no unity, no shared resources, no shared knowledge, no combined efforts, etc.

I really hope that there will be a day whereby all IFAs in Singapore stand up strongly and do things together and bring out the benefits of IFAs in Singapore. Some crazy ideas I suddenly thought:

1) Every adviser in Singapore contribute a small amount into a pooled fund to run a non profit professional IFA association. This IFA association shall market the IFA industry agressively by probably coming up public events or materials to be distributed to public, etc. Their role is to create awareness and will also be a very strong body to protect the interest of IFAs.

2) A centralised compliance and training unit for all IFAs in Singapore. This Centralised compliance unit is run on non-profitable basis and will charge individual IFAs on a yearly average headcount basis. Such compliance unit will have strong knowledge on compliance and is able to free up so much labour and mistakes, especially for the small/medium sized FA firms where turnover rate of staffs are high.

* They are also able to co-ordinate trainings and events on a larger scale basis. Example, a product launch organised for 1000 audiences instead of 100.

3) Standardised forms in all IFAs. By having standard forms, we can use technology more effectively. We can come out with a platform whereby all IFA can do away with papers and submit cases electronically. This way, the administrative work in IFAs will be reduced. No more waste papers, scannings, manual filings, etc Can save a lot of money and time for advisers and company alike.

4) Special softwares created specially for the IFAs industry. Softwares such as Advisers Matrix by i-fast is a very good example. Softwares that can be created include a comprehensive Financial Planning Softwares, powerful Clients Relationship Management Softwares, etc They must be so special and unique only to IFAs and no insurance companies can adopt.

I believe that there are many other innovative ideas out there but no one bothers to share. The IFA of current is like every man an island. Most of us are only concern on survival. We are simply not United enough to do something big. We cannot push the blame that we don't grow to anyone except ourselves. There are simply no strong reason why a consumer will not want to engage an IFA.