//Trainee Advisor Programme

Media image - APCC member taking

// The Challenge

The biggest challenge facing smaller advice firms is often not attracting new talent or helping individuals achieve their qualifications, but providing the ongoing supervision, coaching and regulatory oversight required to take a trainee adviser through to Competent Adviser Status (CAS).

APCC and The New Talent Alliance are committed to helping firms of all sizes develop the next generation of financial advisers. While The New Talent Alliance can support firms with attracting, recruiting and training new entrants, many smaller businesses lack the capacity, experience or internal resources to manage the full CAS journey independently.

Presentation at APCC conference

// Removing barriers

By combining recruitment, training and specialist compliance support, we can remove a significant barrier to bringing new advisers into the profession, enabling more businesses to invest in talent with confidence.

Ultimately, if we want to increase the flow of new advisers into the profession, we need to support firms beyond qualification and training. We must also help them develop competent, confident advisers who can successfully achieve CAS and go on to build long-term careers in financial advice.

This is where members of the APCC can help. The APCC is a trading association specifically for compliance consultants. It members are those you adhere to a code of conduct including the FCA’s twelve business principles. The consultants have a vast array of regulatory experience and often liaise with the FCA through various working groups which the APCC run.

The APCC has a panel of firms who have undergone a vetting process to be on the panel who have demonstrated that they can assist firms work through the CAS process. Each firm has committed to:

  1. A free 30 minute discussion with the IFA firm to discuss what the T&C process is to train a trainee.
  2. If the IFA wishes to progress to take on a trainee, the consultancy would review the firm’s existing T&C Scheme for a set fee of £500 (plus VAT if applicable) to establish whether it is fit for purpose or requires updating before proceeding with training an adviser.
  3. If the IFA firm wishes to take thing further and work with the consultancy, this would then fall to the consultancy’s standard fee rate which will be fully disclosed and discussed before any work commences.

// APCC Member Firms Panel