Fake News

You know there is no handbook or guide to starting a business?

Yes, there are some places to go for help — But it is like a jigsaw and quite difficult to sort.

Perhaps one of the reasons why I help Financial Advisers with their business, I now feel after 16 years of tremendous success, I can help them navigate.

But, in the early days, sometimes it about getting things right, a little wrong and somewhere in between.

One day, my compliance network called me and said that a journalist may called me about my claim’s management firm and that if they did, I should give a “no comment” response and that they, the network, will talk to them.

I can’t remember much more about that call, but within minutes the journalist rang.

Is this MK Financial Planning Ltd?

They said another financial adviser firm had complained to my network that I was trying to poach their client. The firm who had made the complaint, was also part of the same network.

What they didn’t like was that I also offered a claims management service.

When the other financial advice firm had called the network and spoke to the operator, the operator had told them that they, the network, didn’t know anything about us offering a claims service.

That financial advice firm had also informed the publication.

At this point, I was worried and nervous that maybe I had done something wrong or perhaps one of my staff hadn’t followed the rules and I felt I needed to get to the bottom of it.

2 Rules like no other

I had lot’s of rules at MK Financial Planning Ltd as you can imagine, but two were unbreakable and unbendable.

Rule 1

Never take a client from another financial adviser. I wouldn’t be impressed if someone did that to me and I wouldn’t do it to someone else.

rule 2

Never take a claim forward onto a financial adviser. We only took claims to insurance companies.

One or two slipped through the net and I fixed those by shutting them down, but in 10’s of thousands of claims, one or two slipping through was acceptable.

I asked the journalist for the name of the client and when I checked my CRM, it was marked NTU — Not taken up. A note about the client having their own adviser was written and the client was told to go back to their adviser.

My staff member had done exactly what I had told them to do.

ALWAYS REFER THEM BACK TO THEIR OWN ADVISER.

I told the journalist this was in fact the very first question that my team would ask, it was our way to not waste client’s time.

I told him to test it!

Call the office now and see what happens if he says he has his own adviser.

He did this. He had one phone to me and one to my office, I could hear his conversation and it went exactly how I had told him. My colleague explained that he needed to go back to his own adviser. When he had finished his call and came back to me, he said, that does not prove anything.

At that point, I should have realised I was dealing with a buffoon and hung up myself, but I carried on.

The next part of the call was me pointing out the fact that if you call an operator of a large firm like my old network, they are unlikely to know the intricacies of any agreements I had with the management.

For instance, they would not be aware that a few years earlier, the network performed a thorough check on my claims service, made me create a whole new entity to perform the claims and discussed the same with me at every quarterly meeting. So not only were they fully aware. They told me how to set everything up.

Again, this fell on deaf ears.

At this point I hung up.

Off To Print

L et us fast forward a couple of weeks. The article had not been published. I thought it may have died a waste of time death, but then I had a call, from the journalist.

It was 9.30 am and the journalist was asking for comments on the record.

Well, my network had said they will deal with it and I should not make a comment.

The journalist said, it will go to print at midday, comment or not. So, I called my network to speak to the person who had initially called me, no answer. I called a few others, left messages, and sent frantic emails.
Midday passed and I assumed the journalist just said it to get some urgency, but I checked online, and it was there.

No comments added from my network, none from me because they told me, they would.They let me downI was let down by my network when I needed them. I had followed all their rules about how to structure my firms. I followed their guidance when they said they would comment.

How would that article have looked if I had sent dated screenshots of the updates on my CRM? How would it have read if I had sent them the numerous emails and letters on the structure of my businesses from the network?It would have answered every point! The article would have fizzled away because there was NO story.

It was in fact fake news!

What is the moral of this story?

That is a difficult one. I had to put my trust into my network, but they let me down. So how about this.

Have rules, systems, and processes in place.

Be prepared to share the information you know to be true and accurate.

To the Financial Adviser who started the ball rolling - before you jump the gun and start creating fake news, do your homework…

MK Financial Planning Ltd And FAKE News!

Fake News - 3 years too early!

Rule 1

rule 2