MSE News: Banks not giving adequate investment ad...

[MSE Jamie]

"One in four investors are not receiving good enough advice from their bank, a mystery shopping review by the FSA shows..."

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Banks not giving adequate investment advice, says FSA



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[dunstonh]

There are hardly any banks giving advice any more.

[talexuser]

The FSA also reports that grass in green and the sky often blue.

[joolsybools]

Let's face it, most high street banks are pretty useless.

[Vortigern]

Same story on BBC

[2sides2everystory]

Nope, the banks have messed with personal customer investment products ever since the late 80s and have never offered sound advice on any of them.

Here's another take on that "story" - my take on it in fact:

I now have a couple of large files at home to go through with all the bumpf resulting from my parents being hijacked several times over the years by different Barclays advisors (churned in other words) after having appointments made for them by local people employed in the same branch who annually sold their souls for their salaries and appointment booking bonuses.

Nothing has changed. Absolutely nothing. Jenkins talks just like Barclays UK branch network people have done for the last umpteen years about "behaviours" and "values" whilst "providing value for our shareholders". He hasn't a clue what acceptable behaviour is and as for talk of "values" well sorry Anthony, whatever you think they are, those values are totally compromised by your inability to consider anyone except yourselves and shareholders. It makes me want to puke to hear another Barclays person rattle off the same old mantra after worming to the top of the dung heap.

I am here to tell you that none of the large bank behaviours will improve whilst the same staff are employed. Barclays has long employed staff who don't have any real conscience but will have you believe they do whilst they sucker you into the next sale. Then you go home for tea and tomorrow they move on to their next prey. All bank customers should be a fly on the wall when the branches have their morning and evening "huddles" when they discuss who is coming in and what they are going to sell them. It stinks. Half the staff would sell their grandmothers and there they are discussing yours and my personal data like we are cows in a field to be milked good today.

Meantime at Head Office, they are so concerned with manipulating their own share-price that they can't even take a trip to the another floor in the lift without having a live shareprice display ticking away in the lift in bigger numbers than those telling them what floors they are passing.

The result of this shameful culture which has not changed a bit is that my parents have a heap of crap products where the names of the funds have been changed constantly in and out of the control of Barclays themselves via the likes of L&G. The paperwork trail is unbelievably complex and not once, NOT ONCE, has any advisor who sold a product ever contacted them again to review it. It was always the next in line at the branch trough who accessed details of my parents accounts from behind the shoulders of the cashiers at the counter, and who dared to churn, always introduced everso friendly-like by known branch staff who said "oh Mr 2sides Senior, I see you have surplus cash in your account let me book you a review" nd because it was "that nice Joan or Beryl or Mary", they were too polite to say no, and too vulnerable to have a clue why they were being picked out that way.

My parents have no idea what they signed for or how it is doing and the bank couldn't give a damn and treats them like lepers now because they are beyond that magic age where the banks cosy agreement with FSA says they really didn't ought to tap them for new business anymore. 75 I think it is with Barclays? No new business? Forget them then. Leech off the younger customers, but not too young of course because it is the oldies who have the cash upon which the bank and its staff who will never change wish to put their filthy mitts.

Meantime Mum & Dads fund's which ultimately left languishing in something called Barclays No 2 something or other fund and then started causing L&G letterheads to drop on the doormat and now has had its name changed back to a new Barclays letterheaded God Knows What have performed miserably of course.

Thank goodness they kept everything they were ever handed including the crass photocopied "justifications" for selling them this Barclays rubbish.

It is breathtaking how each "Advisor" painted my parents into completely different risk profiles to fit what they were selling on a particular day.

These organisations are NEVER to be trusted again and whilst the branch staff faces remain the same and they promote from within, the whole lot of them are the ones who should be treated like lepers. There are NO innocents working for these organisations. Innocents get hounded out very quickly. What you are left with is a strange brand of people who change colour to blend with their environment, don't have much you can read from their eyes and are effectively cold-blooded reptiles to all but their nearest and dearest who of course brim with pride to tell their friends that their twenty something offspring is a "bank manager"

Captain Mannering would splutter in his tea if he thought the likes of young Pike receiving a set of special training courses run by Private Walker would be the future of banking, but that's exactly what we have had since the 80s and as I say, nothing whatsoever has changed since then, or since Varley and Diamond were rumbled. The likes of Jenkins at Barclays and Hester at RBS are just Pikes on steroids. They know no better and never will now.

Dump the lot of them I say. Nationalise Barclays like we should always have insisted upon 4 years ago. The Qatar deal was just another of their "special" evasions where it now emerges they covered a requirement to evidence more capital not by obtaining it from friendly connections but by lending it to themselves via some kind of launder of debt into capital via a hidden circuitous route - a book-keeping ruse - it now looks to me another wheeze similar to the infamous Proteus deal where they also lent the money to a new outfit they created for the sole purpose of moving a rotten liability off the front of the books by giving it a new white cover as a commercial loan to a junk debt purchaser staffed by (ex-?) Barclays personnel. That outfit bought a huge heap of junk debt/bad loans from the main ship and was then cast out on a long line like an expendable rowboat. Where is it now? Gone, forgotten? And the third major "capital injection" deal which really wasn't was the hyperbolised sale of iShares* or whatever it was eventually wrapped up as to Blackrock where Diamond paid himself a handsome bonus on the sale I think. In turn Barclays seems to have received a large share in Blackrock which of course they churned again some months later at an apparent loss to ordinary shareholders - but you can bet there are a few who know exactly who the winners were.

It is all churning and its aim is to deceive watchers and to suck out cash for the few controlling players and their supporting cast of minions.

[jimjames]

Originally Posted by talexuser

The FSA also reports that grass in green and the sky often blue.

Maybe they need to concentrate more on the unexpected consequences of their RDR that seems to be screwing small savers over.

[talexuser]

Originally Posted by jimjames

Maybe they need to concentrate more on the unexpected consequences of their RDR that seems to be screwing small savers over.

Didn't have the time... the grass/sky investigation took three years.

[JohnRo]

Originally Posted by talexuser

Didn't have the time... the grass/sky investigation took three years.

... and simply resulted in little more than an internal naval gazing exercise, followed by a fifty million pound re-branding exercise at taxpayers expense.

Latest reports suggest very little else has changed... except for the all new office furniture, fittings and stationary logo of course. I wonder who picked up the cheque for turning the S into a C, I bet they laughed all the way to the bank.

[opinions4u]

Originally Posted by talexuser

The FSA also reports that grass in green and the sky often blue.

They're quite busy with horse meat at the moment too.

[grey gym sock]

Originally Posted by opinions4u

They're quite busy with horse meat at the moment too.

long lunches?

seriously, while there is a real issue about RDR pricing smaller investors out of the market for proper financial advice (by removing cross-subsidies), the high street banks have never been giving proper financial advice.

[dunstonh]

seriously, while there is a real issue about RDR pricing smaller investors out of the market for proper financial advice (by removing cross-subsidies), the high street banks have never been giving proper financial advice.

I don't necessarily agree. Lets say an old investment pre RDR paid a 3% commission and a trail of 0.5% p.a. On a £10k investment, thats £300 initial. Lets say an adviser would do it for £500 initial post RDR. Thats £200 more but there is no need for trail on an investment that size. So, that is 0.50% a year cheaper. Within around 4-5 years the cost to the individual is the same and beyond that it is cheaper.

The bigger issue to the smaller investor is the platform review which is increasingly bringing in other products and not just platforms. The banning of backhanders or undisclosed commissions between fund house and platform means explicit charging needs to come in its place. Explicit charging tends to be better for larger investors and worse for smaller ones as there is less cross subsidy (still some but to a lesser extent) and companies are less inclined or even unable to price in loss leaders.

There perhaps also needs to be a recognition that if you can only afford tiny amounts to invest then really you shouldnt be investing as it would suggest you dont have enough cash savings to make it worthwhile. There will be exceptions to that but there are some people who do not hold enough cash back before they go into investing and when the first large loss comes, they pull out because they cant afford to lose any more. They are the ones that shouldnt be invested in the first place.

[jimjames]

Statistics can be shown any way you want. I think this is more shocking than the original title.

75% of High Street bank customers received good advice.

Is that really true? Although 75% isn't good enough I still think in most situations it would be considered a good achievement.

[2sides2everystory]

Originally Posted by jimjames

Statistics can be shown any way you want. I think this is more shocking than the original title.

75% of High Street bank customers received good advice.

Is that really true? Although 75% isn't good enough I still think in most situations it would be considered a good achievement.

Of course it isn't true. Whoever penned that doesn't know their a$$ from their elbow.

[antrobus]

Originally Posted by 2sides2everystory

Of course it isn't true. Whoever penned that doesn't know their a$$ from their elbow.

To assess advice given to a customer with a lump sum to invest, the FSA hired a market research firm to send mystery shoppers into branches of high-street banks and building societies. It said banks gave good advice in about 75% of the 231 cases studied,

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...13-705080.html

But then again, simply reading the first line of the linked article in the OP - "One in four investors are not receiving good enough advice from their bank"- would have enabled many people to have worked out that three in four people were receiving 'good enough advice', and that three in four is about 75%.

[2sides2everystory]

Of course, mystery shoppers do not know a$$es from elbows, antrobus. Especially bank mystery shoppers. They are tick boxers, nothing more. The people they "assess" are also tick-boxers. The FSA thinks regulation can be done by ticking boxes. They have all been ticking each others boxes for years. It's a self-serving sham from the lot of them.

[jimjames]

Originally Posted by antrobus

To assess advice given to a customer with a lump sum to invest, the FSA hired a market research firm to send mystery shoppers into branches of high-street banks and building societies. It said banks gave good advice in about 75% of the 231 cases studied,

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...13-705080.html

But then again, simply reading the first line of the linked article in the OP - "One in four investors are not receiving good enough advice from their bank"- would have enabled many people to have worked out that three in four people were receiving 'good enough advice', and that three in four is about 75%.

We might know that I bet the average person doesn't see beyond the headline. If the headline was reversed it would be very much a non story. Read the details and I think the MSE story is equally misleading as the numbers do not support the statement that they are giving bad advice when in 90% of cases they are! (only 10% of cases were shown to be detrimental advice)

Banks not giving adequate investment advice, says FSA

Very easy to manipulate statistics to suit your needs! This is just one example

http://damn-lies-and-statistics.blogspot.co.uk/