Professional Finance people no better than amateurs

2010

How would you know. You have never seen one.

We have a parrot on the board.

atush

But the parrot is right.

You don't know. Period.

2010

atush wrote: »

But the parrot is right.

You don't know. Period.

What I do know is I`ve never felt the need to use an IFA to be relieved of my money, because as the title says,

"Professional Finance people no better than amateurs"

darkpool

LOL!!

4 different IFAs (and someone who works in the City) have posted on this thread. They've all taken the "IFAs are brill" line.

This is a consumer website, I don't think it right that so many biased posters are allowed to post.

opinions4u

darkpool wrote: »

This is a consumer website, I don't think it right that so many biased posters are allowed to post.

On which side of the argument?

There are some taking an extreme anti-IFA view. There are sime IFAs who have tried explaining, reasonably, what they think that view is wrong. There are others chipping in.

While I personally think the first category are way off the mark with their pitch, they are entitled to air it. Equally, others are entitled to refute it - especially where inaccurate claims are being made.

I've seen people fail to take financial advice at key moments in their life such as redundancy or retirement. It's cost them tens of thousands of pounds in wasted tax.

Somebody getting a redundancy payout of £80k invariably ends up paying £20k income tax on it. Yet with a bit of sensible pension planning this can be turned in to nothing at all or in some cases, where employer schemes incentivise, significantly more.

If the great collective of the British population could all, across the board, organise their own investment, protection and retirement planning that would be fantastic.

The reality is many can't even select the most appropriate savings account from those on offer at the local building society. Let alone work their way around a complex system of tax reliefs, capital gains disincentives and inheritence tax risks or decide how much life cover they need to protect their families.

Jesus, just look at this forum - "what do I do with £5k?" is a common type of question. Now an IFA isn't in the market for that, but Mr Joe Average struggles. Get in to larger amounts and the complexities, choices and tax implications become significant.

If I want my car fixing, I pay a specialist. If I could do the job myself, I would. But I'm not capable or interested in doing it myself.

And as for 2010's example of not using an IFA ... he keeps telling us what a poor investment it was and blaming IFAs for it when they had nothing to do with his decision.

Meeper

This thread and those like it should be locked and deleted.

This is a site to help people. Denegrating the IFA profession, which is the sad hobby of some here, is not helpful and may in fact lead a number of people to avoid the IFA community to their great detriment.

I beseech the moderation staff to remove this thread and all threads like it, for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with helping people, it is simply designed to bash IFA's which is patently unhelpful.

fairleads

Meeper wrote: »

This thread and those like it should be locked and deleted.

This is a site to help people. Denegrating the IFA profession, which is the sad hobby of some here, is not helpful and may in fact lead a number of people to avoid the IFA community to their great detriment.

I beseech the moderation staff to remove this thread and all threads like it, for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with helping people, it is simply designed to bash IFA's which is patently unhelpful.

Human nature never changes, lets just kill the messenger.

Aegis

2010 wrote: »

Anyone who goes to an IFA can expect to be relieved of a large part of their investment whether the "advice" they receive is good, bad or indifferent.

Where any product is commission driven it`s widely open to abuse and often is.

It`s common sense that if an IFA has two products to sell and one of them pays a larger amount of commission/fees, then that`s the one to push.

The IFA has no idea how any product will perform in the future only how it has in the past.

That basically sums up IFA, and yes amateurs could do just as well and save a fortune doing so.

Any time I make a recommendation, I have the choice of accessing investments with up to 5% initial commission if I choose to. Do you know how many times I've chosen those commission levels?

Of course you don't, you're not me, you're not an IFA, you've never seen an IFA and you probably don't actually understand how product commission actually works in reality.

To answer my own question, though, the answer is "never". Clients are charged a project fee or an hourly fee when they come to see me. In some cases I can arrange to have this covered through commission for convenience, in others it's more appropriate to invoice them for the fee amount. Importantly, it's the client's choice how they would like to pay, though I will help to recommend the most efficient way for them to pay my fee.

Commission is almost entirely irrelevant if you're paying/charging fees.

Totton

In my situation I do not need an IFA but to label every IFA as rubbish is plainly nonsense. If my circumstances change then I would go to a professional, there are a lot of good one's out there.

2010

opinions4u wrote: »

And as for 2010's example of not using an IFA ... he keeps telling us what a poor investment it was and blaming IFAs for it when they had nothing to do with his decision.

Firstly O4U I do follow your comments/posts on the savings and investments threads and they are mostly useful.
I don`t know if you are/were an IFA or not and I don`t really care.

Nowhere have I said that the one particular investment you mention was a "poor one".

This has been twisted by the usual biased IFA`s who seem to spend more time on here than they do selling their wares.
(so maybe there is something in it about the well paid deserting them in droves because of their high charges)

What I actually said about this one investment was (for the umpteenth time), if I had put the same lump sum into a 5 year fixed rate savings bond and done the same again, I would have done better.

That`s it.