Seen IFA, But also seen neg comments on here...

Linton

longleggedhair wrote: »

No not from personal experience (or regret!) if you had read my post properly you would see I was commenting on the experiences of many people who have been "screwed over" for want of a better word, two of whom have posted on this forum. I do not have personal experience and never will as I do not intend to become one of them!

Two is many? A statistically meaningful sample?

If you base your life on complaints on the internet you are never going to buy anything.

longleggedhair

Linton wrote: »

Two is many? A statistically meaningful sample?

If you base your life on complaints on the internet you are never going to buy anything.

Oh get real.

I was making a reference to this forum, but I have heard many complaints over many decades from several sources and they all say the same high charges unsuitable products. I dont class all IFA's in that group and i am sure there are good ones out there, but I personally would not use one for the above reasons.

Linton

longleggedhair wrote: »

Oh get real.

I was making a reference to this forum, but I have heard many complaints over many decades from several sources and they all say the same high charges unsuitable products. I dont class all IFA's in that group and i am sure there are good ones out there, but I personally would not use one for the above reasons.

Your choice, I am sure you could come to a similar conclusion about electricians, plumbers etc etc. Many people would be well advised to use an IFA, depending on what they want done and their knowledge /time/experience.

I will use one for sorting out an annuity/drawdown from multiple pensions.

robmatic

Linton wrote: »

So you have never used an IFA yet you know that bad advice based purely on commission is given by many of them. Where do you get your evidence from? Clearly not personal experience.

If you ever speak to someone who works in sales or new business at a product provider they will be fairly unequivocal that the amount of commission that they pay directly influences the amount of business that they write.

Why would that be?

atush

longleggedhair wrote: »

No not from personal experience (or regret!) if you had read my post properly you would see I was commenting on the experiences of many people who have been "screwed over" for want of a better word, two of whom have posted on this forum. I do not have personal experience and never will as I do not intend to become one of them!

Good for you to be clued up.

Bad for you to confuse IFAs with FAs. As I can be fairly certain from what you have said, you have no idea if the FAs involved were independant or not.

cloud_dog

longleggedhair wrote: »

While I have noted for a number of years the good advice given by many IFA's on this site, such as dunstonh and co I am disgusted at the level of charges and bad advice being given by many IFA's purely on the basis of commision rater than client need, quite frankly its appaling, and having been around a while I never have and now, never would touch an IFA.

My advice is to manage your own affairs, its not that difficult, base it around high yielding blue chip shares, Investment trusts and high interest savings, and keep all of your money in YOUR pocket!

LLH, you need to be careful about giving too much weight to posts on a financial site. People only tend to post when they have something to say, usually because of an issue or complaint; those that have no need to complain do not post.

You need to accept that there will always be bad apples in the barrel but that doesn't mean they are all bad.

jamesd

When it comes to returns, if we stick to just UK markets, the 2011 Barclays Capital Equity Gilt Study, one of the most respected regular studies, gave these figures for real return (after inflation correction):

UK equities: 5.1% for all 111 years average.
UK gilts: 1.2%
UK Corportate bonds: 2.1% for last ten years only, lack of data for earlier.
UK Index linked bonds: 4.3% for last 20 years, 2.4% for last 10, lack of data earlier.
Cash: 1.0

For United States:

Equities: 6.7% for all 85 years
Government bond: 2.4%
TIPS: 6% last 10 years, lack of earlier data
Corporate bond: 5.6% last 20 years, lack of earlier data
Cash: 0.6%

Which of these is best depends on the particular time, it's highly variable.

Note that these markets aren't where Barcap expects the greatest returns to be. That's varied but has often included emerging or frontier markets. Such places are where you need to be to have a high expectation of beating the long term UK average, though the UK can do substantially better than average if you pick your time and investments.

jamesd

bossymoo wrote: »

Also thanks to JohnRo for sharing your experience, I'm glad you got something sorted. I think it's fair to say its usually a good idea to wait awhile after significant bereavement before making decisions like this. I just hate seeing the money sat in an online saver. But my husband wouldn't have wanted me to stress about it. He would also say to trust my own instincts.

Life is hard enough just now without me having to worry about getting my money back...

Nothing wrong with leaving things for a while. I suggest trying to avoid any lockins so you can change your mind later. No lockins with normal funds and that's part of why I like them, as well as the generally lower costs than some products.

dunstonh

I was making a reference to this forum, but I have heard many complaints over many decades from several sources and they all say the same high charges unsuitable products. I dont class all IFA's in that group and i am sure there are good ones out there, but I personally would not use one for the above reasons.

A few issues there.

1 - Research has found that over half the people seeing tied FAs actually think they are seeing an IFA. So, IFAs are often tarred with the FA brush unfairly
2 - Going back over a couple of decades is not fair to measure standards of today. Not saying it is perfect but the differences over 5 years ago, let alone 10 or 20 years is staggering.

The majority are good and price fairly. The old school will take commission which is typically much higher than fee based. Commission does not make the advice bad. it just makes it expensive. However, that goes for any walk of life. Builders who quote £10,000 more than another. Plumbers that are 100% more than the other one. Prices are what you choose to pay. If you dont like the price, then dont pay.

psychic_teabag

dunstonh wrote: »

2 - Going back over a couple of decades is not fair to measure standards of today. Not saying it is perfect but the differences over 5 years ago, let alone 10 or 20 years is staggering.

This sounds a bit like an admission that, as recently as 5 years ago, things in the IFA world weren't great.

I wonder how many of the bad feelings on here are based on recent experiences vs older experiences. Of course many arrangers will be continuing to reap trail commission from the "bad old days". (I have no direct experience of IFA. Not happy about experiences with financial salesmen many years ago when I was even more financially naive.)