The increasingly regulated financial environment presents a challenge to professional adviser bodies to prove their value to advisers, according to Institute of Financial Advisers (IFA) president Nigel Tate.

Almost half of the country’s risk advisers attended Sovereign’s roadshows for their new business insurance products, making it one of the company’s fastest selling insurance cover options.

Property Tutors – whose recent newspaper advert triggered a Financial Markets Authority (FMA) warning – has been defended by Gilligan Rowe & Associates (GRA) Matthew Gilligan.

The Ministry of Economic Development (MED) is aware a loophole exists that allows people with foreign convictions to become registered financial advisers and is "looking into the issue."

Unregistered financial advisers can be labelled ‘cowboys’ without giving offence to the rest of the industry, according to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The Government should investigate banning financial adviser commission payments and should consult with Australian authorities on the model being proposed across the Tasman.

Nelson financial adviser Tony Mount is facing 527 charges of fraud totaling $1.4 million in a case Nelson police say is one of the largest and most complicated they have ever handled.

The ranks of Authorised Financial Advisers (AFAs) have been swelled by the addition of 76 advisers from the Canterbury region.

Des Morgan is well aware he’ll “take some flak” from the advice sector, but he insists his no-advice online life insurance model is filling a need – particularly for younger, internet savvy consumers.

In the wake of signals from Labour leader Phil Goff that the opposition may campaign for KiwiSaver compulsion, Institute of Financial Advisers (IFA) chief executive Peter Lee said forcing savers into the scheme wouldn’t benefit advisers – at least in the short term.

The Financial Service Providers Register (FSPR) will be offline until at least Wednesday after an outage affected a number of Ministry of Economic Development (MED) websites.

The lack of a single clearing house for complaints is a fundamental flaw in the disputes resolution system and makes spotting systematic issues impossible.

Loan sharks, registered financial advisers giving investment advice and QFE staff that are under trained and under supervised are all in the sights of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA).

Insurance advisers who fail to deal successfully with complaints not only jeopardise referral business, they are also ignoring important feedback on how to improve their operations.

If investors fail to show greater confidence in advisers – and greater appetite for a broader diversification of products – then questions will exist as to the worth of the recent raft of financial regulations.

Financial Markets Authority (FMA) chief executive Sean Hughes has admitted there is nothing to prevent people convicted of crimes overseas from becoming registered financial advisers.