A study group of UK financial planners will attend the annual convention of the Financial Planning Institute (FPI) of South Africa, which usually attracts around 1,200 attendees, to learn more about the country’s upcoming RDR regulation.
Phil Billingham, director of Perceptive Planning, revealed he has arranged the eight-day trip to the Cape Town from 14-21 October, explaining that UK financial planners can learn a lot from their South African counterparts.
“Over the last few years, I’ve been interacting more with planners in different countries, and also noticing that more and more of our clients have families and business connections with other countries.
“While the UK is one of the most connected countries in the world, we have not really tapped into those connections to help us understand how other countries are dealing with some of the issues we are facing here,” he said.
Study trip
The key themes for the trip are:
- How is South Africa managing to maintain financial inclusion as it implements RDR-type regulations?
- South Africa has a very high level of international connections, with many South African citizens living outside South Africa and many non-South Africans resident in South Africa for parts of the year. How are local planners and regulators dealing with the cross-jurisdiction issues resulting from this?
- South Africa, Australia and Canada, while facing many of the same challenges as the UK, are taking slightly different regulatory approaches. What can financial planning practices in each country learn from the others?
Billingham, who regularly attends South African financial planning conferences as a speaker, said that while the country is “clearly following our regulatory path” by implementing their own version of RDR, “they are learning from our mistakes and applying these principles in different ways”.
“For example, they are trying to avoid creating such a large advice gap,” he added.
“Given the increased international flavour of this convention, and a similarity of the South African approach to regulations, it seems a good idea for a cohort of UK financial planners to attend and share experiences,” said Billigham
A group of more than 20 Australian financial planners are also likely to attend as well as smaller representations from other countries such as the USA and Canada.
UK advisers wishing to attend the two-day conference, which this year will feature high profile speakers such US financial planner Deena Katz, can contact Billingham but must be aware that the trip is self-funded.
