However, in an interview with
Money Marketing, chairman John Cowan and chief executive officer Michele Golunska, reveal that SBG will be u-turning on this decision as part of a wider strategy to expand the business.
Cowan says: “The manner in which we did this previously was that we actually licensed [advisers]. In the network, we had financial advisers who dealt with mortgages, and we had financial advisers who did defined benefit transfers, property, UCIS and so on.
“That got the business into an awful, awful mess and so when we talked to the FSA as it was back then, we decided to delicense people from doing investment business. Instead, we opted to run the mortgage, general insurance and protection and thought we’ll run a directly authorised business, helping them with compliance services.”