But increasingly conscious that public perception matters the organisation has set about responding

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But, increasingly conscious that public perception matters, the organisation has set about responding to the current government's interest in reforming the framework of regulation by coming up with its own blueprint.The manifesto, drawn up by Chris Swinson, who becomes president of the institute next month, is currently with the Department of Trade and Industry. But, while pointing out that the joint disciplinary scheme - due to hear a case involving the role of four Coopers & Lybrand partners in the collapse of the Maxwell empire - is run independently of the institute and the other accountancy bodies, he says: "There is a huge wish to get it right." As a chartered accountant who was a partner with Price Waterhouse for 11 years and has served as a member of the institute's council for several years, Mr Collier is not exactly an outsider. But it is clear that he is intent on bringing a fresh approach to the role that has supplanted that known as secretary and chief executive."The job has much more of a team role now," he says in reference to the fact that he will be a member of an executive group that will include the president as well as the heads of the three areas, or directorates, into which the organisation has been split. Just installed in the newly created post of secretary general of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, he acknowledges the disquiet about lenient penalties administered to past wrongdoers and about the lengthy delays associated with many investigations.

The absence of any spectacular corporate collapses in recent months may have taken the edge off public clamour for reform of the way the accountancy profession is regulated, but John Collier is under no illusion that the problem has gone away. Last but not least, they try to establish what would happen to your family if you died or suffered an accident or illness that prevented you from earning a living.Once the facts have been established, the factfile helps to decide what your priorities are. If you are young and single but not very rich, you might want a savings plan to build up a deposit for a house; if you are married with a family, life assurance and income protection as well as a mortgage come into the frame; and of course it's never too soon to start a pension plan, preferably a flexible one you can grow as you prosper.If you are a struggling artist or actor, the factfile may show that, regretfully, you cannot afford some of the goodies on offer, but if you are in secure employment and well-placed on the career ladder with good prospects and a generous company pension, company car and a healthcare plan that the company pays, for your priorities will be very different.Clifford German. Factfiles also establish whether you are a cautious investor who would not sleep at night if you thought you could lose money even temporarily, or whether you would be comfortable taking a degree of risk in order to achieve a better long-term reward. But it will establish whether in the circumstances at the time the sales person or adviser took reasonable precautions to get you something suitable.Factfiles establish what you own and what you owe, what you earn and what your prospects are, what you spend on essentials and what you can afford to save or invest. Salesmen are obliged to draw up a factfile for all their customers before they begin to sell any financial products, and independent financial advisers are obliged to do the same before they even start to give any financial advice. They go into your financial circumstances in some detail and can take anything from half an hour to two hours to carry out properly, depending on how complicated your circumstances are. But the sales people and advisers are not being nosey or wasting your time.The intention is that if anything goes wrong and you, the customer, complain that you were sold an unsuitable product or given the wrong advice, the factfile is available to allow an independent arbitrator to decide whether the salesman or adviser did his or her homework and established your financial circumstances before deciding what financial products would be most suitable.The factfile is not, of course, a guarantee that the product you buy or the advice you receive will be the best you could have had, or even that it will be a good investment or advice Investments and advice don't work like that.

Factfiles are an essential part of the system of investor protection built up in the past few years to protect people from unscrupulous salesmen and encourage you and I to sign away our hard-earned cash with reasonable confidence that we are getting a reasonable deal. In fairness to them, this argument reinforces the point that to make that extra money they have to be prepared to provide an ongoing service. What is clearly wrong, however, is for you to be led to believe that you are somehow automatically better off.So when it comes to looking for advice, don't lose sight of the motto caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. Always look for somebody who has integrity and knowledge of the area in which you wish to transact business.