Why a retro approach to financial advice is back in fashion

The wheel has turned full circle. Financial advice from an agent tied to a provider is making a comeback, after years in which conventional thinking dictated that the only way forward was independent financial advice.

As first revealed last week in the trade magazine Money Marketing, Aviva, one of Britain’s biggest insurers, is to restore face-to-face advice for people who are retiring who are currently without help.

This follows similar moves by Standard Life and Old Mutual, all of which have been predictably labelled as the return of the Man from the Pru – the thousands of Prudential agents who cycled door to door in the last century, collecting as little as a penny and staying for a cup of tea and an often useful chat.

In the 1980s and 1990s regulators, government departments and the media all lauded the IFA as the only true supplier of the purest wisdom. IFAs were allegedly made all the purer three years ago when the Retail Distribution Review insisted that consumers paid fees instead of banks, insurers, pension firms and fund managers paying secret commissions.

There was just one flaw.