IFA accuses Aviva of bid to poach client

4 December 2009 | By Hannah Stodell

An IFA has accused Aviva of trying to poach his client although the provider says it does not have paperwork to indicate that the client belongs to the adviser.

Aviva contacted a client of Hereward Financial Services managing director Mick Jones two weeks ago without his consent, offering an appointment to discuss retirement options for an existing pension.

When Jones questioned Aviva why it had approached his client, he was told that the case was marked as orphaned.

Jones’ firm was an appointed representative of Norwich Union between 1993 and 1995 before joining DBS. He became a directly authorised IFA in March 2005 following the demise of Network 300.

Jones requested quotes for a pension top-up in 2005 and says documents clearly state the firm’s new name, client policy details and his role as agent.

In June, Money Marketing revealed that Aviva would be reviewing the script used by call centre staff to determine if a client is orphaned following another adviser’s complaint that the firm had poached one of his clients.

An Aviva spokesman says: “Aviva does not have a letter of authority on file indicating that Hereward Financial Services is the customer’s adviser.

“However, Aviva is taking this case very seriously and is conducting a thorough investigation. The IFA channel is Aviva’s biggest and most important distribution channel and we will be happy to discuss this issue further with Hereward Financial Services to resolve this case.”

Jones says: ” I do accept that mistakes can happen but surely the salesperson who contacted my client should have asked her if she already had an IFA. My client is annoyed that ano-ther department within Aviva has been furnished with her personal details without her knowledge.”

Readers' comments (22)

Anonymous | 4 Dec 2009 10:16 am
One of my clients contacted Aviva direct to increase their mortgage protection, Aviva cancelled the origional policy which resulted in clawback and set up new policy direct with client. They need to address these issues.
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keith Thompson | 4 Dec 2009 10:18 am
the article does not make clear whether the IFA has been in contact with the client regarding this plan since 2005, however, if I had not been contacted by my IFA since 2005, I would consider myself orphaned.
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Anonymous | 4 Dec 2009 10:20 am
We had a client call Aviva about a general insurance query, afterwardsthey then directed him to a direct sales team who convinced him to cancel his policy with Aviva through ourselves and take one out direct with them at the same price. Aviva have done precisely nothing about it and clawed back our commission!!
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Dave Green | 4 Dec 2009 10:22 am
I'm with Keith Thompson on this. Has the IFA done anything other than requesting quotes for a pension top-up in 2005? The article doesn't say. If the IFA hasn't done anything else, then they haven't really got much cause for complaint if the customer doesn't consider themselves a client of the IFA.
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Rod Leonard | 4 Dec 2009 10:24 am
Why is anyone surprised? Norwich Union tried to remove all of the small Broker agencies a number of years ago and take their business direct, untill the IIB stepped in to give us support.
These companies who merged, to produce faceless international organisations have not got a clue how to treat anyone fairly, TCF are words uttered by the FSA but only IFA's have to adhear to the rules. Banks and Insurance companies can do as they please!
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Anonymous | 4 Dec 2009 10:32 am
Isn't this a breach of data protection? In that AVIVA may have mis-used data regardless of if the comsumer felt like a client of the IFA or not.
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Anonymous | 4 Dec 2009 10:45 am
Well I'm not with Keith Thompson on this one, how could Aviva know the contact history or current relationship with the Jones client? I'm afraid this goes much deeper than the superficial administrative error this seems to be. Whilst providers are busy creating Wrap platforms for "IFA" business models, who do you think will be branded when clients inspect investment portfolios. Life offices are busy looking for market share in a more aggressive manner and will need orphan or neglected clients to feed their own sales force. Let battle commence!!!
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Anonymous | 4 Dec 2009 10:45 am
At the start of November I had a client who rang Aviva to request they change his Mortgage Life Policy to a non smoker rate as his wife hadn't smoked for over 12 months.
They advised him to cancel the original plan and re-write it direct with them causing us to be clawed back the commission.
When I complained to Aviva they said they had followed the COB rules and it was just hard luck on our behalf.
It seems cross selling to IFAs clients has become part of the culture at Aviva. For a company that says they value IFAs as an introducer channel I find this very strange bevaviour.
In case you are wondering yes we have seen the client recently but he did not consider it necessary to concern us with what he saw to be an administrative amendment to his policy.

Does make you wonder about the wisdom of using Aviva doesn't it?
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Anonymous | 4 Dec 2009 11:06 am
Two points I would like to make:

Active IFAs clients are unlikely to deal direct.

Does Aviva not have a duty of care to orphan clients under TCF? If the IFA is doing their job they have nothing to fear
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Pete Kerans | 4 Dec 2009 11:37 am
I am currently awaiting a response from Aviva reference direct marketing to two clients for Life Assurance, their only connection with NU is via an Investment arranged by my firm.

Their initial explanation was that they has general branch policies and the client information was derived from this, pity they didn’t bother to look at the clients names and address- My brother and Myself!
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