The role has been taken over by Simon Colboc which was done as part of a managed succession plan at FECIF.

Stanfield will continue to work with Colboc to ensure a smooth handover.

The change was ratified at a recent FECIF board meeting.

To read more on this topic, visit: Dynamic Planner eyes Europe expansion

Stanfield said: “I initially accepted the role back in 2014, intending to do one full term of 3 years. I have actually done a little over three terms, meaning more than nine and a half years in total – I thus felt that it was time for me to step down, not least to enable Simon’s new ideas and energy to take FECIF forward.

“Having worked with him for many years, I am sure that he will be perfect for both the role and the development of FECIF over the next few years.”

Stanfield will still remain on the board but will have reduced duties to allow him to focus further on this role as chief executive of FEIFA.

Colboc added: “I am honoured and excited to take on this role, as our industry is facing unprecedented change. I will look to inject my experience as best I can and bring together various viewpoints.”

European IFA representation may change in detail from one country to another, but it is basically the same battle everywhere. 

The battle is between small independent advisers attempting to increase and protect their client’s wealth and big battalions who wish to move the independents out the way to acquire as much of influence over that wealth as possible.

For much of Europe; banks are the prime area for advice and use lobbying tactics to attempt to minimise the influence of IFAs.

Their most powerful weapon is Capital Adequacy which they use to create a sizeable barrier to entry for smaller players. Sweden experienced this in the 1990s.

A number of new IFA businesses were formed and soon captured over 30% of the Swedish advice market due to the combination of good advice and product knowledge.

Suddenly the Swedish government was under strong lobbying pressure from their banks to increase Capital Adequacy to ward off this new competition. Sadly this was partially successful.

In the rest of Europe, with the exception of the UK, Netherlands and Ireland, all the other countries drive their financial advice generally through providers, mostly banks and sometimes insurance companies.

Value, choice and advice are generally poor but if you know no better you buy from the only source available.

So the problem for those who want an EU wide market for everything is that there are two diametrically opposite distribution methods in play at the same time.

If consumer benefit was truly the marker then the EU would be encouraging the UK distribution model.

That is certainly the opinion of the European consumer organisations but the power brokers have other ideas.

Single solution

So in terms of an EU wide market, the UK, Netherlands and Ireland are in the way of creating a single solution for financial advice.

Since the financial collapse, Ireland has become too small for the Commission to worry about, but as I discovered in Brussels, the Netherlands IFA community has been on the receiving end of both RDR and a number of other tactics designed to demote its market influence.

We know the effects of RDR in the UK which many have seen as the regulator demonstrating an eccentric local whim. I disagree. I think there has been an attempt to create an EU generic advice market and the FSA/FCA has realised that it either leads the process or gets left behind.

‘Fearfully slow’

The current EU directive model is fearfully slow and the UK regulator realises that it can be the de-facto lead regulator in Europe if it moves faster than the Commission – hardly difficult – and it brings solutions which have resonance in other non European distributions.

I believe that this was their motivation not delay to the introduction of RDR as the Treasury Select Committee had suggested.

RDR in the UK is basically a version of the 1980s French market where the masses are captured by the big battalions and only the wealthy are given a fee based only alternative. This was declared in conflict with the Treaty of Rome but still lasted for many years.

The question facing the European Trade Associations is the same that faces the UK. Should Independent Advice only be the privilege of the rich or should it be available to the masses?

My view is that it should be spread as far as possible. There are very few European banks and certainly none in the UK who have demonstrated enough good faith to their customers to be let loose on the European masses.

The European Trade Associations have the skills to promote the IFA cause and now have the coordination to do it together.

IFAs, wherever they are based, have to realise that unless they fund and support their trade association en masse they will be exposed to the perpetual whim of the providers in search of more market, governments in search of someone to blame and regulators in search of a soft target.

In Brussels, EU tax commissioner Algirdas Semeta heralded the FTT as a “world first” and said it would raise up to €35bn (£30bn) of revenue and force banks to “engage in more responsible activities”.

He claimed that the EU financial sector was “under-taxed” by €18bn and that the levies, of 0.01% for derivatives, and 0.1% for stocks and bonds, would ensure that the “financial sector makes a fair and substantial contribution to public revenues”. He said the plan approved by the 11 member states “lays the final paving stone on the road towards a common FTT in the EU”.

The fresh proposals, approved on February 14, increase efforts to stop traders shifting transactions to anywhere out of the FTT zone. The “residence principle”, of imposing the tax on all trading carried out by resident companies, regardless of where the trade occured, has been expanded to include an “issuance principle”.

This includes all financial instruments originating from a resident country. Shares traded in a German company, for example, between banks in London and New York would be liable to pay the tax. The inference is that this would impact on all sorts of companies not just financial ones.

The CBI, the UK trade body, said because the new plans were different from initial plans the impact on growth and jobs must be assessed before proceeding.

Bodies inlcuding the US Chamber of Commerce and The Financial Services Forum wrote to the commission objecting to the unilateral imposition of a global financial transaction tax. They argued that the proposals were inconsistent with existing norms of international tax law and treaty commitments. Washington has voiced concerns that the tax may harm US investors living in the US.

The UK government, with the backing of Luxembourg, has warned that the proposals may breach EU treaties.

The new proposals state that to escape the proposed tax, companies in other nations would have to entirely cease financial services businesses with the 11 nations involved.

Supporters of the tax are unlikely to garner the necessary political support to extend it because of fears that it may harm the growth of the eurozone, and even global economies.

In a statement on its website, the bank said its Brussels office would help it to assist enterprises identify Brussels-based EU funding programmes “and guide them in developing their project idea accordingly”. 
 
In addition to helping Maltese enterprises to tap into EU funded programmes and initiatives, the new office is also expected to strengthen the bank’s existing links with EU institutions and agencies, including the European Investment Fund and the European Investment Bank, the BoV said.  

Borg said the BoV had been encouraged to open the Brussels outpost by an earlier initiative, the Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises Initiative (JEREMIE), which was launched in 2011 to improve access to financing for small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe, as part of a European Commission scheme known as the 2020 Strategy. The BoV won the bid to manage the programme for Malta, and as of the end of September, had approved €11.4m worth of loans, with €25m worth of leads in the pipeline.

“Following the positive experience gained through the JEREMIE initiative, with over 40% of the fund already allocated in the first 11 months of this three-year programme, the bank through its Brussels representative office will be seeking to consolidate further its position as the Maltese financial institution specialising in EU funded financing instruments while, at the same time, assisting our enterprises to tap into Brussels-based EU funding programmes,” Borg said.

A spokesman said the bank was "currently going through the necessary regulatory and procedural operations" and would announce more information about the Brussels office later on in the year.

Leveraging EU membership

Since joining the EU on 1 May 2004, Malta has been seeking to make the most of its ties to the Continent and the international community. The 34th largest island in the Mediterranean, it is located in between Sicily and Tunisia, and is one of Europe’s most densely-populated countries.  

It currently has some 58 double tax agreements, and in 2008 joined the eurozone.

Last September the Bank of Valletta posted a pre-tax profit of €64.4m, 35% below the previous year’s €98.9m, weighed, according to its annual report, by the uncertainty in the financial markets, particularly in the second half of the year.

The results were also impacted by a €15m charge relating to a settlement with investors in a property fund, the management company of which the bank partially owned. 

The bank is 25% owned by the Maltese government, and counts some 300,000 active customers, out of the island nation’s total population of around 425,000. It does not have any overseas banking operations, but has representative offices in Australia, Italy and Libya.

Johannes Muschik, a board member at Fecif, told representatives from the European Commission: "It is important that there are no loopholes to be exploited, notably by banks and insurance companies."

Tim Shakesby, an administrator within the EC’s asset management unit, DG MARKT, said that one of the objectives of Prips was that new products would be covered by the initiative, according to the minutes.

Fecif interpreted this as implying that the difficulty for the Commission would lie in drawing the line between Prips, securities and bonds and between Prips and certain types of deposits.

The minutes stated that as a solution the Commission would leave this to the national level through the European supervisory authorities, as the national regulator would ultimately be responsible for approving what is a Prip.

Derudder also highlighted the fact that Fecif had been excluded from ESMA stakeholder groups, in spite of Commissioner Barnier’s recognition of intermediaries. In response, Shakesby said that the EC carefully assessed input from intermediaries and could request the European supervisory authorities to reach out beyond their stakeholder groups to include intermediaries.

In terms of actions going fowards, Fecif noted that it would be considering further engagement with consumer and EC officials.

Pre-contractual disclosure of product information and likely timeframes for implementation of the initiative were also raised during the meeting.