Adviser Sam Gee has put in place a feedback system for clients to address his concerns that they might not understand the advice they have been given, or the fees they have been charged.
The founder of Manning Gee Investments says client understanding is one of the "key things" he is concerned about, especially as the consumer duty rules get underway.
"What I'm finding, and have always found with a lot of my clients, is that I give them the advice but they just trust me as opposed to really, really understanding in some respects," he says.
"So we've obviously gone from treating customers fairly to treating customers really well. That's not to say that we weren't doing that previously, but it's how you demonstrate that."
Gee put in place a questionnaire in preparation for the consumer duty, which came into effect on July 31. It is designed to flag any issues with client understanding, or any other problems with how they have been served by the Bristol-based firm.
"The [survey] asks sort of reasonably direct questions as to what they thought of our service, how valuable they thought our fees were, or not, and how much understanding they had of what we gave advice on.
"Where that is going to really help us is in terms of looking at those contingency risks, so that we can see if there are any areas that we need to work on better as a firm and can give better outcomes to clients based on what they do understand."
If Gee finds a client does not understand something he will act. He says so far nine out of 10 times clients have understood the fees, but if a client has not read the documentation or has not understood it, the questionnaire would make that clear.
The system has run for three weeks and the response from clients has been good, with about 35 per cent responding. It has even detected some minor issues, says Gee, though it is too early to define any trends.
Another area where the consumer duty has made a difference to ManningGee is in its policy for dealing with vulnerable clients.
"We've always had a vulnerable-persons policy. But we've really looked at those in terms of getting those better," says Gee.
"My clients may have different variations of vulnerability, mainly due to age, but also due to other things like bereavement. So we've looked at getting those processes much better and now we have very robust vulnerability procedures in place that we can monitor, make sure they work and deal with in the appropriate way."
Going it alone
Manning Gee is run by Sam and Naomi Gee — a financial adviser and mortgage broker respectively — and another mortgage broker, Rebecca Delbridge, who is also the business manager.
Sam, the son of two independent financial advisers, started out in his family's business 2003 before joining a small firm in south Wales and another in Bristol after that. But he says it has always been his goal to set up his own firm.
