Philip Anderson

Philip Anderson spent most of his career in the brokerage business. He has worked 21 years at Stuart & Co as manager. According to him, in the brokerage industry, advisors need to provide unbiased financial advice but he realised that it was for the most part wrong. Indeed, company’s benefits are sometimes more important than satisfying clients expectations.
The vision of being a broker in Stuart & Co appeared to be closer to the vision of Philip Anderson. Effectively, Stuart & Co “was a firm that emphasized the development of long-term client relationships based upon rendering expert independent financial advice”.

Although he truly enjoys his job, lately the expectations of his superiors have changes.
The top management decided to incorporate specific products into the annual sales budgets of the branch managers. This new type of management is risky because according to Phil, the advisors must give unbiased financial advice to the clients if they want to have long-term relationships with them. In that case they risked the many long-term relationships with clients that they had worked hard to develop.

In order to make sure that the branch managers are going to respect the new type of management and consequently the new objectives, the top management has implemented a system of cost of controls which consist in cash bonuses. The purpose of this cost of controls is a higher probability that people will both work hard and direct their energies to serve the organisation’s interest.
However, this new type of management doesn’t take into account the ethical concerns. Indeed, the implementation of this new strategy does not truly respect the ethical principles.
Stuart & Co no longer seeks to meet customer expectations but it’s trying to improve its own profits no matter what. The specific products and services sold to clients should be dictated by the needs of those clients and not by the needs of profits.
In its perpetual search of profit, Stuart & Co is