Circle of Life
SEPTEMBER 25TH, 2009 By DOMINIC
Sadly, I lost my father this week after a long and courageously fought battle with pancreatic cancer. He was a fantastic dad and I will really miss his wise counsel and companionship. Whilst I knew the day would come, I have been shocked by the emotional fatigue I have felt at losing someone close to me.
Looking back over the last three years since his diagnosis, I have been touched and humbled by the kindness he was shown and quality of the care and advice he received. His battle with cancer started with a diagnosis at his local hospital in Lancaster and took him, with amazing efficiency, to the Royal Blackburn Hospital and latterly The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. Between his recovery and eventual passing, we came into contact with so many healthcare professionals including, consultants, nurses, GPs and eventually the nursing home staff where he spent his last months. At every stage and at every meeting, the professionals concerned provided dad with the highest level of care and showed tremendous compassion. Their patience and empathy was all the more impressive given their own competing pressures and demands. The whole experience has left me with a renewed belief in human nature and a tremendous respect for the people who form the backbone of our health and social care system.
In turn, the experience has encouraged me to reflect on my own profession and its contribution to society. It can, of course, never be ranked alongside the worth of the healthcare professionals I have mentioned. On a different level however, as trusted advisers to our clients, there are many elements of our service that are crucial in providing the advice and direction needed to reassure clients. Over the years, I have witnessed many of my clients passing through the circle of life. I have been fortunate enough to celebrate births and marriages with them as well as joining them in saying a final farewell to their loved ones. At each of these stages, we have been called upon to provide advice and assistance with their finances and the subsequent impact of the event in question. I am proud that we have earned that position of trusted adviser.
This brings me onto thoughts of one of the other issues I have dealt with this week. On Monday, I received an invitation from Sunrise, the luxury care homes for the elderly chain, to a “Finance and Legal Matters” seminar on 1 October. The event is headlining speakers from St James’s Place, a leading provider of financial products, who is billed as providing advice on “funding care through investments”, “consolidation of financial affairs” and “financial solutions for long term care”.
The reason for my invite was that I had recently visited the local Sunrise home to check out its suitability for my father, once his health started to fail. I was hugely impressed with the facilities and level of care it provided. Inevitably, its staff would have provided the level of care and compassion he was lucky enough to experience. I was, therefore, both concerned and shocked by its decision to invite a representative of St. James’s Place to provide financial advice to vulnerable and potentially wealthy residents. My concern stems from the fact that St. James’s Place does not provide truly independent advice. Instead, it offers only a restricted range of products from which its self-employed salesmen ‘partners’ can earn substantial commissions. I am not suggesting for one moment that the St. James’s Place spokespersons are not experts in their field but the one thing they won’t give the elderly residents of Sunrise is independent financial advice. Given the trust and respect placed in the hands of care homes and advisers, Sunrise must address this issue and I have been working hard this week to encourage them to do so.
As I reflected on the situation, a simple analogy occurred to me. When I went with my father to seek advice on his treatment, would we have been happy receiving that advice from a medical professional who was only able to prescribe from a limited list of drugs and who would be paid commission for doing so? We were, of course, not put in that position and the medical professionals we visited had the freedom and independence to deliver the treatment best suited to my father’s needs. Whilst personal financial planning is, thankfully, not a matter of life and death, it is a fundamental need for many and I strongly believe that anyone seeking it should ensure they do so from a truly independent fee based adviser. This can’t be more true than for the more vulnerable sectors of society which is why Sunrise must not fail in its responsibilities to its elderly residents.
P.S: If you care to read the full press release on this issue, please click on the link below.
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