An IFA has received a request from a customer that all relevant data should be destroyed.  The request came in quoting the new GDPR regulations that come in at the end of the month.  It is nice to know that all our hard work on GDPR may have prepared you all for this moment.  

What should I do? Asks the IFA.  (Answer below.)
The new BAT system includes suites relating to GDPR and in charge of this area is Max and Chloe GDPR@IFAC.EU if you have any questions. 
The answer, for those who are still emerging from our late winter hibernation is “We have legal basis for holding your data…”
More difficult questions will come in over this year, and it is expected that the front line is HR records of interviewees rejected, of potential clients who did not engage with you in the end, but may come back in due course.  In my early career as a financial adviser for Allied Dunbar, we were encouraged to chase all clients down to get a decision – be it yes or no – that allows you to close the file.  Somewhat in reaction to this when I became an IFA in 1996, I  took a view NEVER to chase for any business.  So instead I would send out quarterly newsletters so at least they had reminders and leave the matter in their hands to make a decision in their own time.  Now it may just have been the west country, and particularly the Welsh marches and West Gloucestershire Worcestershire area thing, but time and again people would phone up or reply to letters sent sometimes – to my astonishment - two or three years before as if just a week had passed.  What are you to do with this sort of information?  Clearly a geographical split of potential clients may help, as young professionals in London are unlikely to take more than a month to decide on matters, whereas in other parts time does seem to move more slowly.  More from gdpr@ifac.eu