He added: “Although a paraplanner writes these reports, most paraplanners have their hands tied in terms of the way the reports are written. They are expected to use a template.
"In many instances, these templates have been created by compliance departments at an adviser firm. They might be in house or they might be outsourced, but it’s the compliance view that is driving some of this content.
“We sometimes get asked to put things in suitability reports that we know don’t need to be there from a regulator’s point of view but the compliance department want to dot the Is, cross the Ts and tic boxes.
"We have a situation where we are actually doing the opposite of what consumer duty is asking for because we are not giving the client a succinct, easy-to-read understandable story.
“We really need to be thinking about the end client and not the compliance processes and fear driven decision making.”
Aamina Zafar is a freelance financial journalist
