A Financial Planner aims to quell fears causing advisers and compliance managers to shy away from enterprise investment schemes.

Mark Brownridge CFPTM Chartered MCSI recently became director general of the Enterprise Investment Scheme Association.

He hopes to attract more Financial Planners as members of the body and to widen the appeal of EIS, especially to professionals who may have regarded them as too risky previously.

Chartered Financial Planner Mr Brownridge, who is a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society, told FP Today: “Speaking to providers, who in turn speak to advisers, the biggest pushback they get is around compliance and PI. So, compliance is always a big one.

“How do we get it past our own compliance people (they ask)?”

EISA has been looking at how to show compliance chief that advisers are competent in this area and to ensure they know they are going out to clients with appropriate investments, risk profiling and other related knowledge.

The organisation has launched a new diploma with a greater focus on Financial Planners, which Mr Brownridge said would be a “big part of ticking that compliance box”.

Mr Brownridge said: “We are trying to put together a package with check lists, do’s and don’ts, that kind of stuff, to help advisers to overcome those fears and, more to the point probably, that of compliance managers and directors. It’s often them who are the key to the gate in terms of getting in.”

For advisers and planners who have thus far shied away from EIS, Mr Brownridge, told them “it’s worth tipping those toes in the water”.

The former Mazars planner is going to be emphasising to advisers how EIS can be a great planning tool, with its tax relief benefits.

He added: “We don’t have many Financial Planning members at the moment, there’s a big push to get as many more as possible and were looking at the benefits and how we can do that.”