The hundred men in the hut grumbled and shuffled into their clothes before pushing each other out to the parade ground to be counted.
A guard pulled Advisovich out of the line, prodding him to the warder’s office. The auditor was looking at Advisovich’s paperwork.
“Ivan Advisovich,” the auditor looked at him. “How long is your sentence?”
“Three thousand, six hundred and fifty three days. The three extra days are for leap years,” Advisovich mumbled, not daring to look at the auditor.
“Did you know that even if a client has signed a statement of advice, with full disclosure rules, it is insufficient now to stop somebody from taking action against us?”
Advisovich wondered if this meant his sentence would be lengthened.
“Did you know that your clients are now saying they did not know what they were signing?”
Advisovich could see his sentence stretching forever beyond the horizon. He thought about two recent interviews in which the clients had demanded “how much” longer before he could scope his advice. Just last week, a husband and wife had almost made him cry as they skewered him about his impartiality.
Still others wanted a detailed listing of which systems were used: BT, MLC, CFS or OnePath.
The auditor glared at Advisovich, and told him to return after lunch with the approved product list. “We see you have been recommending products which have not been approved,” the auditor said coldly. “You will have indemnity insurance issues.”
Advisovich said he was very sorry, that he would not make the same mistake, and that he must go to use the buckets. The auditor and the warden told him to return after lunch.
In the warden’s office after lunch, he faced hours of answering the auditor’s probings about risk-profile questionnaires, about direct shares or managed, about deposits versus fixed interest, about risk versus reward.
Then, in the evening, he faced an examination on Centrelink and its hundreds of rules about the old age pension.
He did not feel very well when he sagged into his bug-ridden bunk that night. But, on the whole, it had been a better day than most. He had not been thrown to the chief auditor. He had stolen the extra gruel at dinner time. He had not been caught taking the auditor’s pen.
One more day off his sentence. Now only three thousand, six hundred and fifty two days, from bell to bell.
– with gratitude to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn .
and to numerous advisers who have shared their days with me.
Editor’s note:
From the beginning of this year, ifa took a slightly new direction marked by a redesign along with a greater focus on analysis of events and other thought leadership, plus insightful coverage of the financial services sector.
This initiative was implemented in conjunction with making InvestorDaily the main news source produced by Morningstar Media to complement ifa’s more analytical approach.
In line with these objectives, the masthead is moving to a fortnightly publication cycle to allow the incorporation of new material to provide readers with even wider and in-depth reporting on the industry.
IFA welcomes your contributions editorially – news, features, emails to the editor. This is your forum, your publication. Please email the editor, Philippa Yelland, at philippa.yelland@morningstar.com.
