Halifax Bank of Scotland Financial Review

nemesis1985

Hi.

I have recently received £20,000 and today I went to deposit the cheque at my HBOS branch. The cashier suggested I make an appointment with one of their financial advisers, which I am happy to do.

However I was wondering if anyone has an idea of what products they will try to sell at the review?

Also does anyone have any good recommendations of what I should do with my cash. I would like to invest £15,000 and keep £5000 in a high rate savings account.

Thanks.

tom188

DONT TAKE ANY OF THEIR ADVISE ON INVESTMENTS. They will offer you rubbish tied products and you can find much better elsewhere. See an untied IFA if your not confident to research investments yourself.

For a high rate savings account, try ICICI or Icesave, which pay 5.45%. Read the section on regular savers and see if you are prepared to drip feed into a higher paying account to get higher returns.

Halifax savings products are good, but not market leading.

nemesis1985

cheers!

my dads "untied" financial adviser is coming to have a meeting with me in the next few days so i'll be able to get some more info there aswell. just thought it would do no harm to see what HBOS would recommend, hehe.

tom188

No harm in seeing what they recommend, just don't take up any of their recommendations.

dunstonh

They only offer products from their own label and not the whole market. Some of their products are designed to be sold by low skilled salesmen to low knowledge investors and are quite frankly awful. However, they do have some positive points which are played on to make them sound quite attractive. At the expense of the negative points which never seem to get mentioned.

The product range they have available may only come to around 10-15 products which is insufficient to give best advice. So, even if you get a quality adviser, they will be let down by a poor product range. Compare that the tens of thousands of products/funds available on the whole market.

Tied salesmen are also not meant to give portfolio advice. They ascertain your risk profile and you pick the investment funds in that risk profile. Unless there is only one fund in that profile and that is what they give you. Some will bend the rules a bit and try and do a better job but it is still documented as you picking the funds.

Cancel the apointment and get proper advice with a whole of market adviser (IFA) and not a tied agent.

Also does anyone have any good recommendations of what I should do with my cash. I would like to invest £15,000 and keep £5000 in a high rate savings account.

Nope. We dont know your risk profile, tax status, aims, requirements (both now and future) as well as number of other things. As it stands now, we have have around 15,000 options available to you. It needs more filtering to get that down. (or 10 options if you buy a duff HBOS product).

nemesis1985

dunstonh wrote:

Nope. We dont know your risk profile, tax status, aims, requirements (both now and future) as well as number of other things. As it stands now, we have have around 15,000 options available to you. It needs more filtering to get that down. (or 10 options if you buy a duff HBOS product).

thanks for the advise folks!

dont know anything about my risk profile, in all honesty I don't really know what it means however I for investing I certainly don't want a high risk investment. low to medium risk would suit me fine.

I'm currently a student and not working and as such receive gross interest on my current savings (not sure if that gives u an idea about my tax status).

Regarding my aims, well apart me earning more money I don't know what else there would be?


as for requirements well I would be prepared to lock away £15,000 for a number of years (4-5 years prob).

tom188

Definitely speak to an IFA then and make sure you consider your options carefully. Make sure you are aware of the risks attached to investment. If you are investing it is generally adivisible to invest your money for at least 5 years, shorter timescales are riskier and often cash is a better option.

nemesis1985

is this site pretty reliable :

http://www.unbiased.co.uk

?

jem16

HBOS must be on a "snare the student" recruitment drive at the moment.

My 20yr old student son paid in a cheque(birthday money) a few weeks ago and the cashier wouldn't give up until he made an appointment to see one of their advisers.

As soon as he got home, I told him to phone up and cancel it as he already had a financial adviser helping him - me

kenshaz

They have branch targets,the cashiers are briefed ,being able to say no is a life skill.Whilst I agree this type of marketing is irritating ,resist,because they are not interested in you ,just the target they need to achieve ,not really good customer service.
Halifax lead the field in this type of customer harassment.

dunstonh

unbiased.co.uk is the UK database of IFAs. Filter by postcode and ignore the highly flawed qualification filter (different qualifications over the years mean you only get the specific qualification you filter even if someone has a higher qualification of a different type). You will then get the IFAs in your area.

I had a client get some money out for an investment this week from his HBOS account and they grilled him and tried to get him to see their adviser. They must be getting desperate for end of year targets.