Stay on the right side of the regulator with unregulated products,writes Mike Davies, chairman of Connaught Asset Management

You may have been, up until now, hard-pressed to find much of a link between Unregulated Collective Investment Schemes (UCIS) and the mortgage advisory community. These two, theoretically unconnected, area have however been the subject of both trade body and regulator discussions in recent weeks which have only gone to muddy the waters even further around the whole UCIS market.

The Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI) recently warned mortgage brokers not to advise on UCIS unless they are authorised to do so, having been in talks with the FSA regarding the issue also Linda Woodall, Head of Investments at the FSA, followed this up with an article detailing exactly the same message. There is even a suggestion that some UCIS providers have been deliberately targeting mortgage advisers as they sense a new market given many mortgage brokers have seen significant falls in income since the Credit Crunch bit in 2008.

Given there is a lot written about UCIS, it is important to decipher what is fact and what is fiction? Advisers clearly need to distinguish between the two if they are to make a measured decision. Firstly, let’s deal with the myth or fiction surrounding the word ‘unregulated” first.