Of 4,600 IFA firms surveyed, just 5.1% said they were RDR-ready, and the picture when it comes to qualifications is also mixed, Neil Cunningham director and general manager of MyTouchstone said.
Although it is a clear requirement that at least one adviser must be qualified to QCF Level 4 for a firm to be deemed RDR-ready, currently 57.7% of firms have no advisers qualified to that level MyTouchstone continued.
This is a small but worrying increase from Q3 2011 when the percentage yet to qualify was 57.5%.
A more positive trend, MyTouchstone said, was that 30.4% of respondents to its latest qualifications survey have all their advisers qualified to at least QCF Level 4, up from 27.2% in the third quarter of last year.
London, Bristol and Leeds are among the top locations for RDR-ready advisers in terms of qualifications, with the rest of the set made up with regional cities.
"There isn’t much time left until IFA firms need to be completely ready for RDR, yet the signs from this data suggest there’s still considerable work to do," concluded Cunningham.
Recent conversations with wealth managers suggest the focus until now has been on getting qualifications and the next six months ahead of implementation will be used to get business models in shape.
For more on this, look out for the RDR viewpoint coming up in June’s issue of Portfolio Adviser.
MyTouchstone said that over 1000 IFAs log onto its database every month to upload fresh data, providing a valuable insight into the IFA business make-up and qualification update.
