The IFP has hosted the first Aberdeen Adviser Intelligence seminar with sponsor Aberdeen Asset Management.

More than 80 people attended the seminar held in the historic Grocer’s Hall in the heart of the City. The main topic was  remuneration models.

Talks were given by lawyer Phillip Ryley and IFP chief executive Nick Cann on RDR preparation followed by case studies from Lee Robertson from Investment Quroum and Arthur Davies from Baigrie Davies on how they changed their remuneration models.

All speakers were keen to stress that with only 15 months to go before the RDR is implemented in January 2013 advisers should be preparing for the change.

Nick Cann said: “Advisers need to make sure they have a plan in place, with 15 months to go they need to plan what they are going to do in each month leading up to it.”

He also noted the importance of defined roles within the Financial Planning practice between the adviser, the Paraplanner and the administrator.

“You need to understand your roles and have them clearly defined. This improves productivity, reduces risk for the business and enables advisers to spend more time with the client.”

He defined this using a graph which showed what clients valued and where adviser spent their time.

Clients most valued relationship management, reviews and ongoing service and work on the present plan whereas advisers spent the most time on plan preparation and implementation and admin which were not as highly valued by clients.

Arthur Davies from Baigrie Davies talked about how his firm had changed its remuneration service over 15 months, the same amount of time left until the RDR.

He said it was important for advisers to understand the consquences of the change from commission from fee-based.

He told his advisers: “Move on from being rewarded for transactional sales to being paid for ongoing advice and service.”

Lauren Klugkist from Aberdeen Asset Management said: “Overall it’s gone well, we’ve had a good turnout. There’s no product push from us, we want to give back to the professional community and help them progress forward.”