AKG marks five years of DFM ratings

AKG has marked the fifth anniversary of its work on DFM financial strength assessment ratings and reports.

The AKG ratings and reports focus on operational financial strength and are designed solely for use by financial advisers, financial planners, wealth managers and paraplanners.

Guy Vanner, managing director, AKG, said: “Intermediary firms have a growing awareness of the requirement for them to carry out robust and recordable research and due diligence exercises when validating the selection and/or retention of their key business partners, whether these be DFMs, platforms or pension/protection providers for example.

“AKG’s assessment work and rating/report output ensures that intermediary firms are able to factor in and give due consideration to the financial strength of DFMs within said research and due diligence processes.”

Vanner added: “Our progress made in this five-year period builds nicely on the strong and longstanding footprint already established by AKG across our other sectors and serves to underline to both DFMs and intermediary firms that AKG is here to stay when it comes to our DFM assessment work.

“During the remainder of 2021 and into 2022 we will continue to appraise our DFM coverage and seek to add in further DFMs where we see or hear of demand. This may come from contact with intermediary firms, third party research partners or directly from DFMs, or a combination of all three. Please do let us know if there is a DFM that you would like to see assessed by AKG in future.”