It is surveying advisers who are licenced to provide DIMS in the wake of the collapse of Ross Asset Management, which highlighted it as an area of risk.

Although more than 1300 advisers ticked the box for DIMS when applying for authorisation, it is not known how many of them are actually operating a DIMS service.

The survey asks DIMS operators a number of questions about their business, including how many staff they have, the size of their funds under management and whether they use a platform.

institute of Financial Advisers president Nigel Tate said it was a useful exercise that would identify “red flags” that the FMA could follow up on, such as having a very small number of staff managing a large amount of money, as was the case with RAM.

“Obviously there is knowledge and skill but you have to have the capacity to do it.  If you have $100 million under management and only one staff it should set off some alarm bells,” he said.

Tate said there should have been a question about whether advisers invest through managed funds or invest their clients’ money directly in individual assets as RAM did.

“My gut feeling is you can probably count the number of practitioners that do that on your fingers and toes; there wouldn’t be more than 10-20 throughout the country.  That’s where risk should be identified,” he said.