Physical Gold Limited’s Daniel Fisher examines if now is the right time to buy gold.

Over the past 2 weeks we’ve seen a huge spike in buying demand as the gold price presents a fantastic buying opportunity.

Many clients felt the price was a little directionless for a number of months and have been waiting for a reason to invest in gold. The recent price fall has provided much needed impetus to gold. The fact that it has been oversold (due to panic selling) means that the price is even lower – providing the opportunity to get a lot more gold for your money now than a year or so ago. So clients who have been waiting on the sidelines have now bought as they realise the price offers good value, the environment for gold is still strong and the fact there are few decent alternatives to put your cash.

In particular, we’ve recorded

• Approx. 50% increase in enquiries
• Approx. 35% increase in sales
• Our most popular enquiry during this frenzy being Tax free coins

We’ve also seen many existing gold buyers returning to the market who bought at previously higher levels. This price fall gives them the opportunity to lower their cost price average.

We are now starting to experience physical gold shortages. In particular there are waiting times on some gold bars of up to a month, a real difficulty in obtaining mixed year Sovereigns and I anticipate waiting times to develop on the new 2013 tax free Britannias and Sovereigns – perhaps to around 203 weeks. However, clients are willing to transact now and wait for delivery as they want to secure the current price as they feel it will only go higher over the next few weeks. I would expect premiums on these coins to be unstable as possible increases reflect a lack of supply.

Clients who started pension gold paperwork a few weeks ago (before the price fall) are now able to buy the same amount of gold for their pension at a14% lower price than when they started the process!

Clearly, the gold price adjustment demonstrates its volatility so it certainly isn’t for the short term investor. However, for those looking for medium to long term security, buying in the dips makes perfect sense in attaining the best possible value.

The article Is it the right time to buy gold? was written by Dan Fisher and posted on the Physical Gold Limited blog

Physical Gold’s Josh Saul asks the question: What’s Gold’s Problem?

Gold’s 14% drop in price over the last few days has stunned the market into a panicked selling frenzy! Gold wasn’t alone in its descent and in fact all commodities have lost considerable value.  With less people trusting the banks after what happened in Cyprus and now Portugal – people are now starting to ask – “what shall I do?”

The answer to this gold related question is straightforward but before we go down that road – I want to make it clear how we got here:

It wasn’t long ago that the vast majority of market participants and analysts were predicting $2,500 an ounce for gold – some even by the end of next year. These predictions were made in the face of weakening global economic circumstances. Europe is technically bankrupt and can’t afford to repay monies borrowed. Cyprus has just set a dangerous precedent of helping themselves to people’s bank accounts in order to raise money. People are of the opinion that this could happen in Portugal and wider Europe and consequentially – people are being turned off using banks. Confidence has dragged European stocks down and wealth is dissipating into thin air.

Have all of these problems disappeared? I very much doubt it! In fact to the contrary – it’s got even worse.

• Cyprus is still short of considerable cash and announced last week that they will have to sell 400m Euros of gold to raise money. Such of move would of course push the price of gold down. The institutional investors, hedge funds and traders saw this as a huge opportunity to take their profits and sell before Cyprus does. The intention was of course to manipulate the price and create a downward spiral so that the institutions could buy back into the market circa 7/8% cheaper!

•  Simultaneously – the U.S decided to jump on the band wagon and re-iterate its commitment to no further money printing. Something they always do months before they hit the button on the money machines.  This strengthened the greenback and further depressed the gold price.

• Traders around the world had lost considerable money on sinking European stocks and as such needed to cover losses and margin recalls by selling gold; this further depressed the price

• All of the above created a knee-jerk selling frenzy which continued the downward spiral and again triggered automatic sell orders for the traders.

I forgot to mention that the hedge funds and larger institutions are now taking advantage of the 14% discount and buying back into the market. Cyprus never sold in the end nor did Portugal. It’s now clear to see who benefited from the fall!

The end result is that gold is now 14% cheaper than it was 10 days ago.

This coupled with the fact that the world’s problems are still more a concern today than they ever were surely means that gold now represents a stronger buying opportunity.

The light at the end of the tunnel for gold and silver market bulls, as far away as it may now seem, is that “blood in the street” is usually a value-buying opportunity that occurs only a few times in a decade, if that much.

The article What’s Gold’s Problem? was originally posted on the Physical Gold blog

This article from the BBC goes into how Cyprus is planning to sell of much of it’s gold reserves to help finance part of it’s bailout.

An assessment by the European Commission says Cyprus must sell about 400m euros (£341m) worth of gold.

The country has already been forced to wind down one of its largest banks in order to qualify for a 10bn euro lifeline from international lenders.

Even with that bailout, it is predicted that the Cypriot economy will shrink by 8.7% this year.

Cyprus’s total bullion reserves stood at 13.9 tonnes at the end of February, according to data from the World Gold Council.

At current prices, 400m euros’ worth of gold amounts to about 10.36 tonnes of metal.

The sale by Cyprus will be the biggest bullion sale by a eurozone central bank since France sold 17.4 tonnes in the first half of 2009.

European finance ministers meet in Dublin on Friday to discuss the Cyprus bailout.

Analysts say it is very unlikely that other European Union states will become big sellers of the precious metal.

Portugal holds 382.5 tonnes of gold, worth some 14.76bn euros at current prices, in its reserves, while Spain’s holdings stand at 281.6 tonnes, worth 10.8bn euros.

Italy is the world’s fourth-largest gold holder, with 2,451.8 tonnes, worth 94.6bn euros.

The original article – Cyprus to sell gold reserves to help fund bailout can be found here.

In our previous impact of volatility article we made an argument for diversification:

• Large stock market drawdowns occur relatively frequently
• It takes higher positive returns, or a longer period of positive returns, to overcome a large drawdown
• Therefore it’s rational to attempt to reduce volatility within a portfolio
• The most common way of reducing volatility is by diversification: investing in assets that have no (or negative) correlation
• However, correlation between many assets and markets has been increasing over the last decade, and increases more rapidly during violent market falls
• Therefore many investors have been seeking alternative, non-mainstream assets to achieve diversification

In this article we will go one step further and consider ways of measuring the success of a diversification strategy in reducing volatility and explore how risk adjusted returns can help us rationally assess how much risk we have taken on to achieve a certain level of return.

Measuring Risk (Volatility)

In financial mathematics, risk is defined as volatility. An asset or portfolio with unpredictable returns that vary wildly would be considered more risky than one with more stable returns, clustered in a tight range.

There are a number of ways of measuring volatility. One of the simplest is to calculate the range: the difference between the highest and lowest return in a given period.

More useful is the standard deviation: the square root of the average of the squared differences from the mean return.

This might look and sound complex, but it’s not:

• Work out the simple average of the returns (the mean return)
• Then for each return, subtract the mean return and square the result
• Then work out the simple average of the squared differences

Note: we use the square of the differences to ensure that we are working with positive numbers only – that way we can be sure that positives and negatives don’t cancel each other out in the equation.

• Then take the square root of that result

Note: taking the square root puts the result back into the original units – this would normally be percentage returns when measuring the performance of an investment.

Example

Portfolio A has returns of 2,2,4,3,1 and 5% over a 6 month period

The mean return is 2.84% (add up all the returns and divide by the total number of observations)

The differences between the returns and the mean are -0.84, -0.84, 1.16, 0.16,-1.824 and 2.16% (subtract the mean return from the monthly return)

The differences squared are 0.69, 0.69, 1.36, 0.03, 3.36 and 4.69 (multiply the number by itself)

The sum of the differences is 10.83

The variance is 1.805 (the sum of the differences divided by the total number of observations)

The standard deviation is 1.34% (the square root of the variance)

This tells us that if returns are within one standard deviation of the mean, they will fall within a range between 1.5% and 4.18% (2.84% + or – 1.34%)

Statistically, for a normal distribution of returns we would expect the result to be within one standard deviation of the mean around 68% of the time

If the returns are within two standard deviations of the mean, they will fall within a range between 0.16% and 5.52% (2.84% + or – 1.34% x 2)

Statistically, for a normal distribution of returns we would expect the result to be within two standard deviations of the mean around 95% of the time

So by finding the standard deviation we have a simple, easily understood measure of risk. Of course, it is what is known as an ‘ex-post’ measure of risk, which in plain English means it is after the fact – we can only use this to look at historical data, not to make predictions about the future, and of course it is only theoretical. Reality can turn out to be much more unpredictable as the crash in 2008 showed.

Comparing Returns Between Portfolios to Reduce Volatility

Now that we have a quantifiable measure of risk, we can compare how much risk two different portfolios took on. Modern Portfolio Theory (and, frankly common sense) suggests that a rational investor would choose the less risky portfolio for the same level of return.

So in the example above, the portfolio achieved a total return of 18.2% with a standard deviation of 1.34%. This would be preferable to a portfolio that achieved 18.2% with, say, a standard deviation of 5%. In this new portfolio, even though the total return is the same as the original portfolio, there was a much greater range of returns and it was much more volatile. There would be a much greater chance of underperformance.

Risk Adjusted Returns

So how can we compare portfolios with different levels of return and different standard deviations? The most common method is known as the Sharpe Ratio.

Again, this looks more complicated than it is.

The Sharpe Ratio drills down to greater detail by using a concept known as the ‘risk free rate’. Now let’s be totally clear – in reality there is no such thing as a risk free return, but in financial mathematics the risk free rate is used in a similar way to a ‘control’ in a science experiment. It’s the return you could achieve for the lowest possible level of risk. The return that could be achieved by investing in short term government debt is usually used as the risk free rate – such as UK government 3 month gilts or US 3 month treasury bills.

The Sharpe Ratio subtracts the risk free rate from the return the portfolio actually achieved. This means that the equation is only looking at the additional return achieved by taking on the additional risk of investing in something other than the risk free investment.  We then divide that return by the standard deviation to give us the Sharpe Ratio.

This gives us a single number we can calculate for any portfolio or any investment and then use to make comparisons. The higher the Sharpe Ratio, the better its risk adjusted return – or to put it another way, the less volatility investors were exposed to in order to achieve that return. A negative Sharpe Ratio would indicate that the risk free asset performed better than the investment being analysed – not a good investment at all!

Conclusions

If investors want to measure if their diversification strategy is successful and how much volatility they’re exposing themselves to, then standard deviation is one useful measure.  If they want to assess if the returns they are achieving are worth the amount of risk they are exposing themselves to, then the Sharpe Ratio is a good place to start. Having a grasp of these concepts allows investors to start to construct a portfolio that minimises volatility.

A Post-Script

Note that it isn’t realistic to try and rid a portfolio of all volatility. Some volatility is inevitable if a kind of return is to be achieved. The objective is to earn the required level of return for the lowest level of volatility.

In the past few days the Cypriot Government has announced the incredible news that it will be raiding its residents’ savings to help pay for its banking crisis – including 60,000 Brits. Bank accounts on the island will be hit with a levy of up to 12.5% in a bid to satisfy Euro bigwigs that Cyprus are playing their part in dealing with its debts and therefore deserve another bailout.

So what does this incredible move by the Cypriot Government, engineered by Germany, actually mean?

Firstly, the fact that the  Cypriot Government needs an £8.7Billion bailout from the IMF and Brussels shows that the Euro crisis has not gone away. The headlines of the past month or so have focussed on the UK ratings downgrade and the increasing chances of a triple dip recession. I guess no news on the Euro front was deemed ‘good news’. It’s natural to hope that the Euro crisis has improved as we haven’t heard of any catastrophes lately. Unfortunately this latest requirement for funding demonstrates that the crisis has not gone away. In fact, while we hear of high street brands going bust here in the UK and people continuing to lose their jobs, you can bet that there are even more companies going under and massive job losses in the likes of Greece and Spain. We just haven’t heard about it recently.

Even more worrying is the fact that the bailouts now seem to have strings attached. Germany’s government have basically said that to earn this bailout, Cyprus needs to raise £5 billion themselves by stealing from its residents’ savings accounts. This illustrates how the richer Euro countries and governments are becoming fed up of throwing good money after bad. They want to see the poorer countries and their governments demonstrating that they will take charge of the own finances and not just seek bailout money. Who knows what future bailout strings will demand, or if this clause shows that bailouts are coming to an end – possibly pushing the weaker countries out of the single currency.

We also need to be concerned about the consequences of such a savings raid by the Cypriot Governments.

While in the short term it may pay the latest loans for the Cypriot banks who have accumulated huge losses to Greek banks, in the medium term it could seal their fate. It is likely to cause a panicked public to withdraw as much money from ATMs as possible. For others, they may choose to leave the country to attempt to protect their wealth, rather than face the governments trying to poach from their accounts. For sure, it will diminish private wealth and therefore reduce any spending or hopes of recovery on the island.

Apart from the impact a collapsing Euro will have on the UK, perhaps we should also be worried about our own savings. It is highly unlikely that the UK treasury will copy such a move here but the Cypriot Government actions further undermine traditional values that your money is safe in the bank. With interest rates on savings accounts well below inflation, there seems little incentive to take the chance. It absolutely makes sense to move some of your money around to hedge your bets.

Gold is an obvious place to move some of your bank savings into. Returns have far exceeded those in savings accounts and the yellow metal has proved just as liquid as cash – especially in its physical form of coins or bars. Moreover, the economic environment we find ourselves in paves the way for gold to continue its rise in value. With UK gold coins being completely tax free, they provide a compelling reason to be proactive with your savings before the headlines return closer to home.

The original article “Should we be hiding our money from the Government?” was written by Physical Gold’s Daniel Fisher.

The Alternative Investment Report 2013

The alternative investment market place has grown rapidly over the last five years, from less than 50 alternative investments in 2008 to over 250 today. After more than 15 years of poor delivery from traditional strategies, there is a lot of investor interest in alternatives. Taking 9 months to complete, and numbering 78 pages in total, Intelligent Partnership have researched, authored, designed and produced the first ever comprehensive industry report – AiR 2013.

Content

The focus of this industry report is on real assets that are most commonly described as alternative investments. The emphasis is on directly held, non-regulated investments marketed to UK based retail investors in 2012.

Topics include an over view of the drivers behind the growth in alternative Investments, analysis of the role of these investments within a traditional portfolio and an insight into the requirement for further due diligence.

The report also offers detailed analysis of the eight most common alternative investment sub-sectors or asset classes. This analysis is based upon in-depth market research; giving readers an up to date snapshot of the types of alternative investment products available in the market.

CPD Accreditation

Intelligent Partnership has achieved accredited status for AiR 2013 from the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). Readers of AiR can claim one CPD (Continuing Professional development), hour towards the CII member CPD scheme for each hour spent on the report.

Tamsin Mills, Director of Accreditation Services at the CII, presents Guy Tolhurst, MD of Intelligent Partnership, with the CII CPD certificate for the Alternative Investment Report (AiR).

Gaining CPD accreditation for AiR as well as their alternative investment masterclass training demonstrates Intelligent Partnership’s commitment to delivering only balanced, informative and high quality content to trade partners.

Guy Tolhurst, Managing Director of Intelligent Partnership commented;“With the sector growing as quickly as it has been, and understandably coming under increased regulatory scrutiny, we felt that the time was right to bring all of the knowledge we have learned over the last five years into an industry report. Our intention is to combine this knowledge with our own research and help readers make informed decisions about where they want to take their alternative investment business in 2013”.

Registration for the Alternative Investment Report

To receive a digital copy of AiR 2013, please register at AiReport.co.uk.

For further press or media enquiries please contact Peter Robinson at peter@intelligent-partnership.com regarding the alternative investment report.

WORSENING DEFICITS, monetary inflation and the surge in Asian wealth make the backdrop for Gold Investing as bullish as ever, according to four-decade veteran of investment analysis and advice, Donald Coxe.

Writing in his final Basic Points letter for clients of the BMO financial group, Coxe says that “The Fed is resuming rapid expansion of the monetary base. Japan will soon be flooding the currency markets with Yen. The ECB remains expansionary.

“US fiscal deficits will [meantime] continue at rates that would have seemed unacceptable even a few years ago,” says Coxe – now leading  the Global Commodity Strategy tie-up between BMO and his own Coxe Advisors – while Asia’s emerging economies choose to store a growing portion of their wealth in gold.

“The richer Indian people become,” says Don Coxe, quoted by mining-news site MineWeb, “and the richer Chinese people become, and the more than central bankers have reason to worry about the politics and profligacy of the Eurozone and the US, the more those gold buyers will influence gold prices.

“It is almost impossible to conceive of a more bullish long-term backdrop for gold.”

Gold “doesn’t require Apocalypse to be a sound, long-term investment,” he goes on. But Coxe’s view remains that the US stock market will likely lag gold badly over the next 3 years, while gold investing may prove “the last asset standing” if Western governments and central banks resort to outright money printing.

Echoing Coxe’s call for gold investing focused on mining stocks, rather than bullion, ‘This bearish sentiment for gold and gold mining stocks are at levels that in the past have led to strong rallies,’ says John  Hathaway, manager of the top-performing Tocqueville Gold, quoted by the UK’s Citywire site.

“I think the [gold price] will hit $1900 this year and then we can see a bull market trend start to reassert itself for equities. From here, I think we can see a lot of new money coming into the stocks.”

Source: Bullion Vault

Date: January 29th 2013

Q1. How are you going to supervise the Retail Distribution Review (RDR)?

If your firm has already had a regulatory review, then we will not visit you again specifically to look at compliance with the RDR. But if you answered questions about your progress towards compliance with the RDR as part of your previous review; this may be checked during the year.

Q2. My firm has already had a regulatory review – will I receive another visit in 2013 on RDR?

If your firm has already had a regulatory review, then we will not visit you again specifically to look at compliance with the RDR. But if you answered questions about your progress towards compliance with the RDR as part of your previous review; this may be checked during the year.

Q3. I have been told that my firm should expect a regulatory review in the next year; how much of it will focus on the RDR?

The review is focused on governance, culture and controls – the RDR is relevant to all of these areas. At your review we may ask some specific questions on the RDR and your approach to implementation. We may also ask questions designed to determine your firm’s ability to identify and mitigate risk.

Q4. What must I have on file to prove I have been offering independent advice?

Firms need to show evidence that that they are able to advise on all retail investment products (RIPs) that are capable of meeting the investment needs and objectives of their retail clients.

As they need to be assessed on an individual client basis, many firms will be unable to say upfront what products may be capable of meeting the investment needs and objectives of their clients. So we will expect most firms providing independent advice to be able to provide advice on all types
of RIPs.

Advisory firms typically use research to distil the product market (whether or not they formally construct a panel). If a firm does this, it should be able to show evidence of its selection criteria to select products and the product research it has undertaken, and how these are consistent with the independence requirements and the client’s best interests rule.

If a firm excludes a certain type of RIP from its ‘panel’ because, after review, it decides that there is a valid reason consistent with the client’s best interests rule for doing so, it should be able to show evidence of this decision.

A firm that says it provides independent advice also needs to be able to advise off-panel if that would be in the best interests of a particular client. As stated in our previous guidance (FG12/15), to do this a firm’s advisers should maintain an awareness of what is and is not included in the panel.

This is so it can identify clients for whom an off-panel solution would be suitable. The firm will also need to show evidence of how it regularly reviews the decision to exclude certain product types from
its panel. A firm that holds itself out as independent should also genuinely be able to consider all RIPs of the relevant market.

We would question a firm that said it was independent and considered all products but did not have a mechanism for actually advising on a particular product – investment trusts or exchange traded funds (ETFs) for example.

We would also expect the firm’s disclosure documentation to be clear about the service the firm provides.

Q5. Do you have to regularly advise on all products/funds etc to remain independent?

No, you need to consider all retail investment products in the relevant market, but we do not expect that you will actually recommend all retail investment products as a matter of course.

Q6. Why do I need to recommend Unauthorised Collective Investment Schemes (UCIS) to my clients?

We deem UCIS to be potentially suitable for retail customers who can be classified as sophisticated or high net worth.

A firm’s independent status will not be affected if it does not consider UCIS in its review of product types when giving advice to those retail customers who are not sophisticated or high net worth, i.e. ‘ordinary retail investors’.

So if the firm has reviewed its client base and decided that UCIS are not suitable for its clients, it could still call itself independent and not offer advice on these products.

The firm would need to be able to show evidence of this and would also need to keep this under regular review. Firms that deal with sophisticated/high net worth clients who may receive promotions of these investments, on the other hand, may need to include the products in the review of the market for those clients, for instance if the clients have the requisite appetite for risk.

The firm will also need to consider how it will deal with new clients who already hold UCIS products in their portfolio.

Q7. Must I advise on ETFs and unit trusts to be independent?

ETFs and unit trusts are retail investment products, so we would expect a firm holding itself out as independent to be able and willing to advise on these products if they meet the investment needs and objectives of any of its retail clients.

Q8. What do I need to do on my suitability reports to show I have not considered certain retail investment products?

The suitability report (which will be required in most cases) for an individual client should set out the client’s demands and needs and explain why the firm has concluded that the recommended transaction is suitable for the client. It should also set out the possible disadvantages of the transaction. There is no requirement to set out all the products that you have not recommended.

Q9. What happens if I am an IFA but have not recommended all products in the retail investment range? If I don’t recommend all products in the retail investment range, do I lose independent status?

To hold itself out as independent, an advisory firm must be willing and able to advise on all RIPs that could potentially meet the investment needs and objectives of its retail clients (see Q4).

We would expect a firm’s review process to always start with it considering the whole of the relevant market in an unbiased and unrestricted way. However, we do not expect a firm to actually recommend all products captured by the broad definition of RIPs as a matter of course.

The firm may conclude that, for many of its clients, certain products are not going to be suitable, and therefore not consider these product types further for those clients.

Q10. Can I use a single platform and remain independent?

We expect it to be very rare, if possible at all, that a firm could use a single platform for all of the investment business for all of its clients and meet the standard for independent advice.

Generally, a single platform will not offer products from the whole of the RIP market. So a firm will need to advise ‘off-platform’, or through another platform if that would be in the best interests of a client. Our factsheet ‘Using platform-based investments and the independence rule’ covers this subject.

Q11. Do all my advisers need to be able to provide independent advice for my firm to be classed as independent?

Yes. If your firm is stating that it is independent, all advisers in the firm must provide independent advice.

Q12. Could a group of restricted advisers be independent, if collectively they could advise on all the products on the retail investment range?

No. Individual advice to clients by individual advisers needs to meet the independence rule.

Q13. Can you ‘outsource’ certain pieces of advice to other individuals and still remain independent?

In most circumstances, no. As explained in our guidance on independent advice (paragraph 2.15) ‘If a firm cannot or will not advise on a particular type of retail investment product, and that product could potentially meet the investment needs and objectives of its new and existing clients, then its advice will not meet the standard for independent advice.’

If an adviser does not in practice give advice in an area where their clients have needs but outsources the advice then we would question whether the adviser can or will advise in this area and, hence, whether the firm is providing independent advice.

There are only two exceptions to this – advising on pension transfers/opt-outs and long term care (paragraphs 6.2 – 6.6 of the guidance on independent advice).

Q14. How are you going to supervise adviser charging?

We will monitor the adviser charging rules as business as usual during visits, reviews and thematic work.

Q15. If you visit me, will you criticise the fees that I charge?

The cost of advice is a business decision for the firm, provided it meets the rules we have laid down in our rules (eg COBS 6.1A) on how to determine its charging structure, and considers its duties under the client’s best interests.

As long as it complies with those rules, it is unlikely that we would comment on the amount charged or the method used. But we will pay close attention to the disclosure of the cost of advice and the disclosure of what the client should expect to receive for this cost, especially in the area of ongoing advice.

Q16. What is your view on us charging a proportionately higher fee to clients with fewer assets as these clients can cause more time and work?

Your firm decides the cost of advice, in line with its charging structure, which must be shown to the client before advice is provided. We understand that the time taken to provide a recommendation does not depend on the sums of money involved.

We can see circumstances where it would be feasible to charge somebody with less to invest, a proportionately higher fee than someone with a higher amount. However, any material difference in charges from those set out in the charging structure will need to be drawn to the client’s attention and agreed with them.

You are also free to offer or negotiate a different price to that in the charging structure for a particular client, for example, a lower price for an existing client.

Q17. Can we charge clients if they decide not to follow the recommendation or advice we give?

You must disclose clearly the nature of your charging structure to the client before you provide advice. It is up to you whether you make a charge in all cases, or only if the client decides to follow your recommendation.

Q18. In what areas can an adviser deal with a client without the necessary qualifications post-RDR?

The full list of regulated activities with details of whether an appropriate qualification is required to carry out that activity can be found in our Handbook under TC APP 1.1.1R. Tables showing which qualifications are appropriate for each activity can be found in our Handbook at TC APP 4E.

As a result of the RDR, the qualification requirements for advising on securities, derivatives and packaged products have changed, but the requirements for all other activities remain the same.

Q19. Can I advise on pension and investment products not in the retail investment range without the necessary qualifications?

Advising on pensions and investment products is a regulated activity with a qualification requirement. You must hold an appropriate qualification to advise on these products.

Q20. Will my professionalism status show on the FSA Register?

We will not be listing details of professionalism status on the FSA register. If you want this information, you should contact your accredited body.

Q21. If I don’t achieve the necessary status, what happens to my existing Group Personal Pension (GPP) clients?

Any retail clients you deal with will need to be advised by an alternative adviser until you reach full compliance. GPP clients are retail clients and so will fall into this category.

Q22. I took my exams in December; can I continue to give advice while I wait for the results?

No. If you do not achieve the necessary status, any retail clients that you deal with will need to be advised by an alternative adviser until you reach full compliance.

• Original article: IFAonline.co.uk
•  Author: Laura Miller
• Date: 25th January 2013

Followers of this blog will know that Intelligent Partnership sponsors 30 children at this amazing school in Mombasa and Guy personally sponsors another 5. We are delighted to report that the school is going from strength to strength. After a near perfect run in the Kenya Music Festivals, the construction of a new kitchen block, and the installation of solar panels, the school is also now able to start work on classroom 7 after successfully raising funds which will provide a much needed space for the older children to move into.

The challenge is now on to raise money to build the final and largest of the classrooms which will see the school become a full primary school. Classroom 8 will double up as a hall and also provide a critical exam room so the older children can take their KCPE exams. The cost of £12,000 sounds relatively small in this day and age but it is a huge stretch for the school who are currently trying to kit out classroom 7 with desks, blackboard and tables etc.

Any and all help is so appreciated by the school and the children who attend it. If you are interested in finding out more then please watch this video and visit the UK registered supporting charity page www.destinychildren.co.uk.

You can also find out more about the school by visiting www.destinygardenschool.org