Quantcast
Menu
Save, make, understand money

Investing

IFA who got clients to sign suitability waiver banned

IFAonline
Written By:
IFAonline
Posted:
Updated:
31/07/2012

A sole trader independent financial adviser has been banned by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and fined £10,500 for lacking competence and failing to treat his customers fairly.

Adrian Mark Mosley, of West Yorkshire-based Mosley & Company, is prohibited from holding a Significant Influence Function or acting as a sole trader, the regulator ruled.

It said he did not have the necessary competence and capability to do his job and made a number of serious failings, including:

1) Making potentially misleading statements to customers about their rights;

2) Telling some of his customers that his services were ‘execution-only,’ when they were advised sales;

3) Seeking to exclude or restrict his duties to customers, encouraging them to sign a waiver declaring that they ‘could see no wrongful advice now or in the future’;

4) Failing to research adequately products for his customers;

5) Failing to assess his customers’ personal and financial circumstances and record adequately why his recommendations were suitable;

6) Recommending and arranging regulated mortgages for his customers, when he was not qualified to do so;

Failing to ensure an adequate complaints handling process was in place.

Bill Sillett, head of retail enforcement at the FSA, said: “In taking this action, we are protecting the public from an IFA who misled his customers and was neither competent, capable nor qualified.

“Mosley has now been banned and fined. This should act as a message that the FSA will dedicate time and resource to punishing misconduct across all areas of the financial services industry, whether the firm is small or large.”