Julian Stevens

23 August 2010 8:00 am | By Lee Jones

Julian Stevens is one of Money Marketing’s most vociferous IFA commentators, always on hand with an opinion and an insight. He says he got into financial services “by default” but over time his passion for the value of indepen- dent financial advice has grown.

He now co-runs his own small IFA, Harvest IFM, in Bristol and is a regular voice in the pages of most of the financial trade publications and websites, usually offering a critical view of the FSA.

Stevens is blunt in his assessment of the regulator, describing it as “a profligate, incompetent pile of bureaucratic jobsworths with their own agenda”.

He says: “A lot of people have said that it is only a matter of time before one of the FSA Swat team sweeps into my office but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Stevens says the regulatory landscape has got progressively worse in recent years due to the agendas of politicians and regulators and the situation has now reached a crisis point.

“The industry is being pulled around. It is being pulled around by politicians and it is being pulled around by the regulators, who do not have a neutral, impartial agenda.”

Stevens regularly writes to his local MP Stephen Williams as well pensions minister Steve Webb and Treasury financial secretary Mark Hoban regarding the future direction of the industry.

As yet, his views on the regulation of the FSA and on pension reform have not been heeded. “You do get rather frustrated when you do make the effort to contact the people who should be listening but it is just forwarded on and you receive a non-response. You wonder what kind of democracy this is because it feels like a fob-off democracy.”

Stevens is currently campaigning to highlight the FSA’s failure to follow the statutory code of practice for regulators. “The FSA ignores it and it seems as if there is no effort made by any body or organisation to force it to observe that code.”

He is petitioning the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Treasury in an attempt to find answers to his queries. “They have all been passing the buck and doing nothing while the system is obviously not working remotely like it should,” he says.

However, while he remains frustrated about the state of financial regulation, Stevens has more faith in his own sector. Recent reports have suggested disunity within the IFA ranks but Stevens does not see this. “I think in any industry where you have many thousands of small firms you are going to get different views but I do not see a huge fragmentation or a wide disparity of opinions as to what we are all fundamentally about.”

Stevens says the biggest problem facing the sector is not in-fighting but the emergence of the new regulator, the Consumer Protection and Markets Authority.

“There is a real risk that this dismantling of the FSA will be nothing more than a partitioning of the regulator.” He would prefer to see “a root and branch reform of the current system” but does not expect to see any big regulatory changes in the coming years.

“I see no signs of the FSA taking meaningful steps to create a level playing field. That is wrong, it is the lack of level playing field, it is a lack of proportionate regulation, it is a lack of cost-effective regulation, it is a lack of accountability and it is the fact that there seems to be a skewed and corrupt agenda to the whole regulatory framework.”

As a result, he believes the IFA exodus will be more severe than others have predicted as fewer advisers are forced to pay out bigger regulatory levies. “In the fulness of time, there will be no one left to fund the CPMA because it will get to a point when most advisers say to hell with this because they will be paying more and more and nothing will be changing for the better.”

Stevens himself is planning on “jumping ship” after 2012 when he hopes to passport back into the UK through an European regulator.

“One way or another, I am not going to carry on after 2012 under the current system because I do not think anything will improve.

“What I do see is more bureaucracy, more expense, more hindsight reviews and more disregard for natural justice. Passporting is an alternative route and one that is a hell of a lot better than the one that the FSA is trying to railroad us down now.”

He says this is the best hope that UK IFAs will have of being able to offer their clients good advice. “I think if we take the passporting route, we will still be able to get along and give good advice to our clients and that is the important thing.

“Some people think the FSA might be able to slam that door but, as I have said, it is not the FSA’s door to slam and that is why I feel so good about it.”

Until that time comes, Stevens says he will continue to “bang the drum” for reform. “I do not really believe it makes a great deal of difference but you hope somebody somewhere reads your views and thinks you make a good point and then takes those to someone who may be in a position to actually do something about it.”

Born: Oxford, 1957
Lives: Bristol
Career: 2005-present: Harvest IFM; 1994-2005: WDS; 1989-94, Bruce & Partners (Cheltenham); 1986-89: Burns Anderson subsidiary UMG; 1982-86, Stewart Wrightson; 1978-82, Guardian Royal Exchange
Education: 1971-75, Kings College, Taunton
Likes: Good music, good food, cycling, people who give straight answers to straight questions
Dislikes: People who are overpaid, hypocrisy, poor service in restaurants, people who do not give straight answers to straight questions, liars
Drives: Volvo S60 D5
Album: Focus Three by Focus
Film: Forrest Gump
Book: Travels by Michael Crichton
Career ambition: Survival
Life ambition: Financial security
If I wasn’t doing this I would be…A financial journalist

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