“That is a consequence of regulation tightening in many jurisdictions, and compliance getting more stringent. Again, from our side, we implement the highest levels of that across the group and where there are jurisdictions where it's not needed, it just allows us to be ahead of that when it is going to come in the future. We feel that by operating like that, we're always going to be at the forefront,” Burrows pointed out.
While Dickinson agreed the number of offshore advisers had dropped, he felt the number of fully qualified advisers working in the space should have risen.
He said: “If you look at the advisers that are generally being announced, particularly in the UAE, they are all pretty much people coming out of the UK.
“Those people that are moving offshore have obviously helped raise the standard, because the people that now can't achieve the level of compliance and qualifications, they are just leaving the industry, which I would argue is an amazing thing, because you've got one less adviser that is not qualified.
“You have got another adviser that is coming in, raising standards and advice processes. And again, that's just something we need to be at the forefront of. As a business, the whole premise and the hard work we went through to try and get to the double charter standard is to be attractive to these people that are leaving the UK.”
Dickinson believed the suspicion around offshore advisers had completely gone now and UK advisers were actually now more intrigued.
“You have only got to look on LinkedIn to see the amount of people that are getting announced as joining firms. You do not see very many of them anymore that are not really seasoned professionals.
“If I was a young adviser, I would be looking at it going, 'how do I build a client base that is sizable and robust?'. That has got to be easier in an international space, right? It has to be, and because of the way that it has developed and the way, like us as a business, we have built licence frameworks across the world, you have got a career that almost anywhere a client moves to within reason, we can administer the advice process to you,” he added.
Collaboration
Burrows mentioned how AHR had been reaching out to advice firms in the past few weeks who did not have a footprint internationally as a business and take up had been similar to what he had hoped rather than what he thought it might be.
