By: Adrian Khiat IFAs have been around in Singapore since the Financial Adviser Act was enacted in 2001. We are licensed individually by MAS to advise on Life Policies and Collective Investment Schemes. We represent the clients by ensuring that they get better value and advice. We are very focused on providing proper Financial Planning Services to ensure plans implemented are aligned with needs. We diligently read and analyze client's investment portfolio to ensure that they are able to achieve better returns via constant rebalancing and reallocation. Having been part of the FA industry, I observed that the IFAs in Singapore don't seems to grow fast enough and they are not able to attract and retain people in it. The market share of businesses brought in by IFAs in Singapore remain small with only around 6%. The growth is slow and the numbers seems to be stagnant. The benefits of engaging an IFA for long term is so much better than engaging an RM or a tied agent. An RM are more of transactional type of adviser and their concern for clients will not be for long term, an agent is not able to properly adopt the proper investment strategies needed and that they can only sell what they carry regardless if its of the best value for the client. What I feel is that IFAs in Singapore are not united and strong enough. We are not able to innovate and reach out to the public. Each of us have limited resources and we aer too scattered. There are so much ignorance and misunderstandings among Singaporeans about an IFA even though we have been around for 7 years. All the FAs in Singapore don't seems to talk to each other, there are no unity, no shared resources, no shared knowledge, no combined efforts, etc. I really hope that there will be a day whereby all IFAs in Singapore stand up strongly and do things together and bring out the benefits of IFAs in Singapore. Some crazy ideas I suddenly thought: Read more...