Charles Monat Associates, a provider of wealth transfer and liquidity planning solutions to high-net-worth clients, has changed its organisational structure to support the guidelines on fair dealing for financial institutions recently released by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
As a result of the restructuring, Daniel Yeo, vice-president and head of compliance and service quality management, has been tasked to form a dedicated service quality team with independent oversight and responsibility.
Patricia Cheng, meanwhile, has been promoted to assistant vice-president for service quality management with primary responsibility for managing the service quality initiatives for both clients and business partners.
Charles Monat endorses the MAS initiative to promote fairness and transparency in dealings with clients. The firm was founded in Hong Kong in 1971 by its current chairman, Charles Monat. The Singapore office opened for business in 2005.
"These principles are critical to the continued success of Singapore as a world-class wealth management centre and we want to continue to play an important role in this initiative and do our part in ensuring Singapore's continued pre-eminence as a wealth management centre," says Yeo.
With this restructuring, Charles Monat will have independent supervision of key sales and service practices aimed at ensuring their clients continue to receive appropriate product and planning advice on their wealth transfer needs.
In early April, the MAS issued the guidelines on fair dealing for financial institutions when they conduct business with their customers. The guidelines emphasise the responsibilities of the board and senior management of financial institutions to deliver fair dealing outcomes when providing financial advisory services to customers.
The guidelines set out five fair dealing outcomes, namely: that customers have confidence that they deal with financial institutions where fair dealing is central to the corporate culture; that financial institutions offer products and services that are suitable for their target customer segments; that financial institutions have competent representatives who provide customers with quality advice and appropriate recommendations; that customers receive clear, relevant and timely information to make informed financial decisions; and that financial institutions handle customer complaints in an independent, effective and prompt manner.
