The Federation of European Independent Financial Advisers (Feifa) recently reshuffled its board with David Vacani being named chairman of the professional body.
Vacani, who is the owner and managing director of Beacon Global Wealth, replaced John Westwood, who remains on the board.
The newly appointed Feifa chairman spoke with International Adviser about his ambitions in the role.
“We have record membership, an excellent range of quality partner companies and have continued to grow despite the covid pandemic, in fact, we adapted very quickly through covid and thoroughly tested Paul Stanfield’s technical skills,” Vacani said. “To see Feifa continue to thrive would be the main aim. Feifa now produces a great deal of content in terms of the provision of members CPD and assists with ongoing education and resource in a very complex world.
“I would like to see that continue to develop and grow and that we continue to be at the forefront of the evolution of the European advice business as this continues to change and adapts to the modern world.
“Assisting advisers, where required, is very much at the centre of what we should do so that clients get all the help they require and need. For example, we have done much work on ESG and the monthly magazines and website provide a great deal of educational content.”
Improvements
The European advice market is like any other and still needs to adapt to the modern interpretation of what is best practice.
Vacani said the industry needs to continue “to raise the bar in terms of advice” with “sensible and practical regulation and qualifications”.
“Generally, the quality of advice and advisers has got better and better over the last few years and certainly the level of advice I suspect is markedly better than a few years ago. Clarity to clients in terms of fees and modern financial planning tools are the imperative in terms of improvement. I want to see quality long-term financial planning rather than just product sales.”
Vacani also spoke about how the European market could look to replicate the UK in terms of evolving.
“Having worked in the UK market for more years than I care to remember I think that change will continue and there are of course ongoing developments all the time. The way fees are charged will also no doubt change but the developments from the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) process, clarity of fees and charges as well as tech enhancements have helped enormously – giving clients much better outcomes.
“I believe it is imperative that this clarity is continued to be developed in Europe rather than the expensive old commission driven business. Obviously, the products maybe be different, but the goals should be the same.”
UK/EU relations
IA asked the Feifa chairman whether it would be helpful for advice firms if the UK/EU relations were improved.
The relationship between the two has been strained since Brexit.
“Obviously, Brexit has caused all manner of issues for investors and advisers alike,” Vacani said. “Investors have, in many situations, had to be abandoned by long standing advisers which of course creates a great deal of uncertainty for them. Banks as well have also been jettisoning customers as we all know sometimes with desperately short notice.
“Clearly some improvement in UK/EU relations would be very helpful for all concerned but I do think the European advice market has reacted very well and worked hard to solve investors problems and concerns.
“Some longer-term clarity and calmness would certainly be preferable though for all concerned.”
European pensions
The EU has been busy with other areas including its pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP).
The PEPP is a voluntary personal pension scheme that offers EU citizens a new option to save for retirement. The PEPP pension scheme is complementary to existing national pension regimes.
But unfortunately, development of the PEPP has been slow and the product has failed to gain momentum.
Vacani said: “In an ideal world, it would be a complete game changer and let us hope it continues to evolve and be developed.
“However, I think the real difficulty is obviously these things are expensive to develop and of course planning around Europe is different from country to country with varying pensions legislation.
“For example, most savers in France use the vehicle of ‘assurance vie’ investments to save alongside other domestic products and pensions are typically provided by the employer and state. There’s not a lot of incentive for producing the PEPP for this market.”
