Asked earlier this month for his 2017 financial resolution, the newly knighted former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb replied it could be summarised in four words: ‘get a financial adviser’.
No matter how much assistance you can find online these days, most people would still think twice before setting out to sell their own house or draft their own will. Nor would they be inclined to fit their own boiler or do their own dentistry. And yet, for whatever reason, people tend not to think of financial advice in the same way.
I say ‘for whatever reason’ but, historically, two elements have tended to loom pretty large: trust and cost. As the editor of a magazine for financial advisers, I accept it is possible I am suffering from a kind of Stockholm syndrome – that after a prolonged exposure to these people, I have grown overly sympathetic to their cause – and yet this is a profession that has of late been regulated within an inch or two of its existence.
The Retail Distribution Review, which came into effect five years ago, may be clunkily-named but it has been no slouch in working towards its stated aims of improving clarity for those looking to invest, raising the professional standards of financial advisers and, by banning commission payments from product providers, reducing the damaging perception of a major conflict of interest: for whom was the adviser actually working?
As I say, I may be conflicted here myself, but cost would certainly appear a bigger consideration these days, and, as it happens, that goes two ways.
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