Requests for verification as per IFA Section D.5 have begun, with a ludicrous “deadline” of 7-days*.
This relates primarily to financial information and includes, cash flow and Profit/Loss accounts (for the last 3 years).
We think disclosure is unavoidable however believe the proposed deadline to be “Bluff” (for those who remember “Call my Bluff”). 15 years of doing this have also given us other concerns and whilst you cannot, we think, resist disclosure of this on-site, we hold significant concerns about the provision of such sensitive and confidential material direct to the LSC. Were these our Accounts there would be nothing the LSC could commit to which would provide us with sufficient confidence, to post them to my Contract Manager. (Out of fairness to the LSC I am not going to go into specifics here, but will do so if pushed).
There seems also a degree of confusion as to what individual CMs understand these requirement to mean.
Lets hope that a polite invitation to visit your firm, with the offer of regulation issue “nice coffee and M&S chocolate biscuits” will suffice. (Something tells me this will not be so).
*in the first such e-mail we have seen today
