I remember the moment, early in 2018, when the panic set in. I was attending a Financial Services talk on the latest wave of regulation taking hold across Europe. GDPR, PRODS, MiFID II.
Reaching for a glass of water, I tried to calm down. Hard to do, as I learnt that I was going to need aggregated costs reports, investment governance documents, an investment committee, client profiles for each fund selected, data protection processes, cyber security, call recording….
I was going to need something a little stronger to drink, I thought, putting down the glass of water.
As a single adviser running my own book of clients, the walls were closing in. I was well-qualified, experienced, ahead of the game, I felt. But it looked like the game was about to be over for sole practitioners like myself. The costs and time needed to meet this scale of regulatory requirements would be overwhelming.
Or so I had thought. Fast forward one year, though, and my fate was looking a whole lot better.
It’s so often those chance moments in life that set you on a new trajectory. In my case, a simple LinkedIn invitation from a chap called Chris Lean. OpesFidelio? Alright, I will check them out.
It didn’t take long for me to be impressed, and surprised.
After speaking to key personnel in the UK, I took a trip up to their European head offices in Prague to meet the staff there, tour their infrastructure, technology, operations etc.
A seriously impressive set-up which left me wondering why I hadn’t heard of these guys before. Why aren’t they everywhere?
It turns out they were, I just didn’t know it. OpesFidelio allows network members to continue to operate under their own brands, and unbeknownst to me, already included some of the most successful IFAs in Europe.
Now while this isn’t unique, the level of their adviser screening is. We don’t just take anyone, they explained, before drilling down on my qualifications, business plan, fee model etc… I certainly hadn’t been asked for any of this before. Fortunately for me, though, this was going to be a good fit all round.
When I was approached recently to write a short piece about being a happy OpesFidelio network member, now of three years, I made a list of the benefits that occurred to me off the top of my head.
A flat membership fee rather than a percentage of earnings.
Fully regulated across Europe, operating under both an IDD and a full discretionary MiFID investment license. Ties to the wider Aisa Group, who are regulated in the UK, the US, and South Africa.
An award-winning investment proposition, but the option to still manage your own portfolio solutions.
An incredibly experienced and highly qualified group of advisers always happy to help with specialist knowledge, including access to a team of pension transfer specialists, with UK permissions.
Then, there is the bespoke CRM software solution, developed in-house at immense cost, but which solves, in one stroke, so many of the regulatory issues which had seemed so daunting. This incredible system navigates the entire client relationship, from fact-find, objectives, risk-profiling, to product implementation and fully compliant client reports, even to the point of calculating MiFID charges and projections in multiple currencies.
As I reflected on my list, there was no question that the network offers tremendous benefits. So, were these the reasons why I am such a happy network member?
Well, yes, that’s certainly part of it. But it’s not the whole story.
To really understand why I am so happy now, I need to explain why, for so many years, I had been unhappy in this business.
I fell into financial services by chance, but never felt I belonged. Moving from one company or network to the next, the predominant feeling was that none of this aligned to who I was. An ethical person by nature, someone drawn to knowledge, to helping people, I was at odds with the culture of sales, opaque commissions, the endless smoke and mirrors of a product-driven industry. It just wasn’t me.
With the Aisa Group, I have finally found a home of like-minded people. The culture of an organisation filters down from the top, and the vision and integrity of James Pearcy-Caldwell and Clive Tutton have permeated all aspects of the company they have built.
For them, positively changing this industry was no sales spiel, no platitude they heralded across their marketing materials, but rather, it is something that they have actually done; quietly, systematically, and unrelentingly. It has been both exciting and rewarding to be along for the ride, and to see the network continue to improve and innovate year after year.
The Times They Are A-Changin’ to quote Bob Dylan. In offshore financial services a legitimate profession is now growing in the wake of a dated sales industry. There are more and more advisers like myself, dedicated to expanding our knowledge, operating fair fee-based models, offering truly fiduciary service propositions which put client outcomes ahead of sales figures…
And more and more advisers like myself seem to be congregating in one and the same place. As a chap called Chris Lean once said to me, why don’t you check out OpesFidelio?
https://www.opesfidelioifa.eu/how-to-join/
Bonamy Martel is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional, Chartered Financial Planner and Chartered Wealth Manager who focuses on working with British expatriates in Spain and Portugal. He joined OpesFidelio in 2019 and can be found at www.charteredglobal.com
