New technology to check financial adviser credentials

The obligation to validate an intermediary’s status has been placed with product providers

In line with new legislation designed to protect financial services consumers, product providers will in future be able to easily check that financial advisers are properly qualified to write the business for which they have submitted proposals.

Astute, the company that integrates data from life assurers and investment managers, has developed a solution to validate financial advisers’ credentials when they submit applications for new business to product providers on behalf of clients.

The intermediary verification system has been developed on behalf of a number of financial product providers that will use the capability to validate financial advisers in terms of the categories of business they are licensed to propose.

Astute business development executive, Willie Snyman explained: “Among the changes to the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act (FAIS) that will have an effect on financial services product providers is the need to check that a broker or financial adviser is duly authorised, by financial product category, before accepting business.

“The obligation for checking that an intermediary or broker is operating in the correct product categories has been placed with financial product providers who are required to validate the status of the financial adviser at the time of writing the new business. “

The Financial Services Board (FSB) is the custodian of intermediary and broker license data. As a result, the new system will integrate the FSB’s database of financial advisers with Astute’s systems, where the relevant data will be stored.

Financial product providers will, in turn, integrate with the Astute database.

Said Snyman: “Besides the enquiry system, functionality will allow for the update and maintenance of financial advisers’ representative details to the FSB’s systems. Most product providers already have integration with Astute and, by leveraging existing infrastructure, we were able to present a cost effective solution.

“Our technology infrastructure is robust and capable of handling extensive transaction volumes with exceptional reliability. We recently upgraded our switching technology to the latest Microsoft Biztalk release and have derived significant processing improvements. We will continue to invest in infrastructure to ensure the best quality service to our clients.”