Transfering UK Growth to Bonds?

dunstonh

We appear to have developed a new sub-species of homo-sapien infected with the newly discovered 'Wiki-Gene', that turns previously uneducated clots into experts on all things known, unknown and totally made up.

No. They have always been around. Anyone in financial services over the last 10-20 years would know them as Daily Mail readers.

That is quite worrying really. A person with a few thousand sitting in their Barclays, Nationwide or Halifax account -for example -will be offered the 'tied' products sold by their bank or BS at any review or sales opportunity and the wealthy will continue to require the level of expertise from a trained IFA that their investments merit. For those in between - say £20k to £100k they will face a dilemma. What you say is interesting.

Personally, I still think there will be enough IFAs that will be willing to cover the middle ground. It may just come down to skills ability in explaining fees vs commission so the person understands the benefits. Something that currently many IFAs seem to struggle with.

If the FSA does allow Customer agreed remuneration (CAR) then those with £20k-£50k should still be able to find an IFA willing to see them.

What is worrying is that the FSA want the large home service salesforces back giving advice at the lower end. I can see some element of that but I fear its a bit rose tinted spectacles. The old insurance agents did encourage people to save and take out pensions. Problem was that the salesforces are the ones that largely destroyed the image of financial services due to sales tactics and mis-selling. The FSAs response to that is that their remit will be to "give advice on the basis that what they are selling is better than doing nothing" and there will be no ability to complain to the FOS.

Better than doing nothing I suppose is good but how many people that are not at the lower end of the market but the middle or even higher end going to get caught up in the bank's marketing of their products and sold naff products? Noting that the primary advice channel is proposed to have defined contracts that will be simplified like stakeholder plans but not with a charges cap.