President Tony Vidler told delegates at the institute’s recent conference that it was well on the way to becoming a professional body.

Using a set of international standards, he said the IFA fulfilled 13 of the 16 characteristics recognised to make a professional body.

One of the key things which is missing, and is outside the institute’s power, is to have the professional recognised in legislation.

Vidler said that is something the institute was working on achieving.

He also said that the international marks, CFP and CLU, which the IFA has the rights to manage in New Zealand are :enshrined” in the code of professional conduct for advisers.

“This is not co-incidental,” he says.

He says they are the standards that should be applied to every adviser in the market place.

Over recent years while advisers have been moving into the new regulatory environment there has been a significant turnover in membership.  “Literally hundreds of members have left and hundreds more have joined.” Overall its membership was sitting around the 1,100 mark.

One key issue the institute is working on is finding a new chief executive to replace Peter Lee.

Vidler says it has started a search for a suitable person, but it may take some time, maybe four months, to fill the role.

He said the institute has just completed a strategic review and the person for the CEO role maybe a different style of person to Lee.

Now that regulation is embedded, “the organisation now has to start pushing forward strongly,” he says.

He says one of the institute’s goal is to make sure that “every single professional financial adviser will be a member” by 2017.

“We will be the professional standards leader.”

In his rallying call to members Vidler said that “we are making the game. We are taking the profession forward.”

“Others will follow,” he said.