Is the entire financial services industry only out for themselves?

bigfreddiel

every day now we hear about irregularities in the financial services industry beit, libor fixing, money laundering by hsbc, fund managers charging exhorbitant fees and now its the pension industry taking a slice of your money - take a look at the moneybox live page here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/9739627.stm

and listen to the podcast (or tune in to radio4 at 3pm on wednsday), then make your mind up - if you have a pension do it

fj

mark55man

YES

(as is every other private, public and (most) charitable bodies)

we would all do well to remember this more frequently

Pincher

The solution is this:

Like King Arthur, we send knights out to seek and bring back a pure soul, some one is full of zeal for truth and justice, and willing to dedicate his life to preserve other people's pension fund asset values.

Then we clone him/her, and and make it law that all boards of companies must include one of the clones as a non-executive director.

When they are murdered, we know something dodgy is going on, so we do a proper audit with the killer robot accountants we will develop.

somethingcorporate

It's not the charity sector, why would they not be out to maximise returns for shareholders like all private enterprises?

You see foul play in all private and many public industries including charity and civil service so why should we single out the banks for being the bad guys? We've seen oil cartels, corrupt MPs, super-market price fixing etc etc... everyone is at it.

(not that it makes it right, just highlighting that pointing the finger at one set of people is naive).

bigfreddiel

somethingcorporate wrote: »

It's not the charity sector, why would they not be out to maximise returns for shareholders like all private enterprises?

You see foul play in all private and many public industries including charity and civil service so why should we single out the banks for being the bad guys? We've seen oil cartels, corrupt MPs, super-market price fixing etc etc... everyone is at it.

(not that it makes it right, just highlighting that pointing the finger at one set of people is naive).

you're absolutely correct - it was wrong of me to just pick on people who work in the finance industry like bankers, fas, ifas, fund managers and so on.

EVERYONE is at it these day's - they're all out to get you and your hard earned dosh, and to quote an od joke:

"How can you tell if a ifa/fund manager/banker/other is lying?" - His/her lips are moving! - heheheheh - it was funny the first time i heard it and its still funny now.

cheerss

fj

Linton

Everybody (well almost everybody) receiving money for services rendered is doing the work primarily for themselves. If you work are you accepting payment or do you do it out of your love for your fellow man?

The way a market works is that the seller wants the maximum price and the buyer wants it for free. They have to come to an agreement if the buyer is to get the goods he wants and the seller the money. I guess that the problem with the financial services industry has been that the costs of the service have not been transparent which makes price competition rather difficult. Now that the situation is improving, over time we should see more competition and a reduction in charges towards the minimum necessary to run the service.

Oddly many people seem not to want this. People expect and think they are receiving "free" banking and "free" share/fund portfolio management. If some suppliers start to provide transparency their customers wail and whine, and disappear off to those who dont.

gadgetmind

Linton wrote: »

People expect and think they are receiving "free" banking and "free" share/fund portfolio management.

If you're not paying for the product then you are the product.

dunstonh

and now its the pension industry taking a slice of your money

Do you read the news or do you just read the headline and make up the content to suit yourself?

Moby

Linton wrote: »

Everybody (well almost everybody) receiving money for services rendered is doing the work primarily for themselves. If you work are you accepting payment or do you do it out of your love for your fellow man?

The way a market works is that the seller wants the maximum price and the buyer wants it for free. They have to come to an agreement if the buyer is to get the goods he wants and the seller the money. I guess that the problem with the financial services industry has been that the costs of the service have not been transparent which makes price competition rather difficult. Now that the situation is improving, over time we should see more competition and a reduction in charges towards the minimum necessary to run the service.

Oddly many people seem not to want this. People expect and think they are receiving "free" banking and "free" share/fund portfolio management. If some suppliers start to provide transparency their customers wail and whine, and disappear off to those who dont.

Totally agree with this but I think it also has to be acknowledged that not everybody is motivated by financial gain....I hope! and the vagaries of the market should be kept out of public services in my opinion:)

CLAPTON

Moby wrote: »

Totally agree with this but I think it also has to be acknowledged that not everybody is motivated by financial gain....I hope! and the vagaries of the market should be kept out of public services in my opinion:)

which 'pension' company says

1. if you contibuted for less than 10 years you get nothing

2. if you take your pension and want to live abroad in say Aus your pension is frozen for life whereas if you leve in Spain it's indexed linked.

careful waht you wish for.

dunstonh

Totally agree with this but I think it also has to be acknowledged that not everybody is motivated by financial gain....I hope! and the vagaries of the market should be kept out of public services in my opinion

The vast majority of those in financial services are appalled by the actions of a minority and those in such a powerful position.

Privatisation is not the answer. Just look at the cost of the RDR. The FSA put it at £1.7 billion in 2010. This is to put in place procedures that were largely already in place or heading that way naturally. It also mainly targets IFAs who only had 2600 complaints at the FOS last year (under 1%). That is a colossal waste of money to target an area that has very few issues in the modern day. The RDR was conceived in the days of the salesforces and when there were issues. No private company would spend so much money on an area with a failure rate of around 1%. They would focus the resources on the areas with the problems.

The failures are with the FSA. It would go off on a crusade in an obscure and irrelevant area causing millions of pounds of work that would benefit no-one whilst totally ignoring the areas that were issues and known to be issues by everyone. If you wanted them to come up with products and services to the consumer then it would be a disaster.