{"id":499869,"date":"2025-01-10T11:10:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T16:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/?p=499869"},"modified":"2025-01-10T11:10:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T16:10:13","slug":"opinion-flynancial-advisor-ad-is-a-reminder-of-how-title-protection-falls-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/news\/industry-news\/opinion-flynancial-advisor-ad-is-a-reminder-of-how-title-protection-falls-short\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: \u2018Flynancial\u2019 advisor ad is a reminder of how title protection falls short"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A travel agency ad featuring a \u201cflynancial\u201d advisor is the most recent reminder of how title protection, in effect in Ontario since March 2022, falls short.<\/p>\n<p>Toronto-based Sunwing Vacations Inc.\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=b9l-047V3aM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ad<\/a> is a playful twist on Ontario\u2019s protected &#8220;financial advisor&#8221; title, positioning travel advisors \u2014 \u201cflynancial\u201d advisors \u2014 as industry experts who help consumers keep their &#8220;flynancial\u201d plans on track by offering great deals.<\/p>\n<p>The ad helps illustrate what\u2019s lacking in Ontario\u2019s title protection rules: a standard of advice that meets client expectations.<\/p>\n<p>A reader contacted this publication wondering if \u201cflynancial advisor\u201d is offside of title protection, which is administered by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA).<\/p>\n<p>Based on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fsrao.ca\/media\/6101\/download\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FSRA\u2019s supervisory framework<\/a>, the regulator can investigate complaints, such as a title with a spelling variation that could \u201creasonably be confused\u201d with a protected title. FSRA didn&#8217;t directly respond when asked if \u201cflynancial advisor\u201d falls under that example, but the regulator confirmed it has received no consumer complaints. Certainly, the ad doesn\u2019t mislead consumers into expecting financial services instead of travel packages.<\/p>\n<p>And on a salient point, the ad succeeds where title protection doesn&#8217;t: it recognizes that consumers expect advisors to offer advice competently and to their advantage.<\/p>\n<p>Ontario\u2019s title protection fails to meet that expectation when it comes to the financial advisor title. It takes a product approach to competency (effectively, licensing) rather than establishing an agreed standard for advice, as investor advocates have urged.<\/p>\n<p>So, here\u2019s a complaint, albeit one with nowhere to file: While a firm in the tourism industry uses the advisor role to signify expertise to consumers, in this industry \u2014 despite title protection \u2014 that expertise may not be what consumers think it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clients expect advisors to offer advice competently and to their advantage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145539,"featured_media":428445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2318,2312],"tags":[30695,107360],"yst_prominent_words":[6,106178,106174,62910,34127,21820,9090,6676,6448,6059,4828,4747,2269,12,7,2],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499869"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499869"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499972,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499869\/revisions\/499972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499869"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=499869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}