Qualifications
Individuals should supply your firm with their certificates in financial advice or equivalent.
These certificates should be copied and certified by the compliance officer as ‘true copies’, and then placed within the individual’s recruitment file, as a record of their qualifications.
Please note it is not compulsory to have general insurance qualifications in order to sell general insurance products.
If the individual does not have any qualifications, it would be advisable to enclose copies of any assessments the individual may have taken with your company as evidence of their competence/knowledge in general insurance.
The FCA individual conduct rules in the code of conduct sourcebook set the minimum standards of individual behaviour in financial services and apply to almost all employees in a firm except for ancillary staff.
The new individual conduct rule six reflects the new, higher standard of the consumer duty, and the behaviour the FCA expects of all conduct staff.
It requires all conduct rules staff to "act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers" where the activities of the firm fall within the scope of the duty
A key aim of consumer duty is delivering good outcomes for customers and your recruitment process should enable you to recruit individuals that are able to deliver good outcomes for customers.
Alexander McGregor is head of policy at SimplyBiz
