I know what the overheads are of running a business, so I don’t think financial advisers are too expensive. But I do think traditional face-to-face, ‘full-fat’ financial advice is an expensive option for consumers.
[Financial advice] will be the luxury service for the richest people in the country. We need to find a way to get cheaper advice to customers.
People don’t need regulated financial advice at every stage of their life. Take saving into a stocks-and-shares Isa; we should be able to do that online.
People who say it is value, not cost, that is important tend to be the most expensive fund managers. Cost is a really important factor but it’s not the be all and end all.
We’re still not clear enough with customers about what things cost. I find it incredibly frustrating that we are still afraid to have this honest conversation.
The RDR principles were right. On balance it was positive, but the FCA shouldn’t be doing the FAMR work now.
The FCA was in denial about the advice gap for a while. It wouldn’t have been hard to anticipate it and try and work it out in tandem.
People do not want to pay for financial advice – it shouldn’t have come as a big surprise. There was a lack of joined up thinking.
Why do we keep talking to people about products and not life stages? We can and should explain things in clearer terms.
People want rules of thumb and we have created this Frankenstein-like army of compliance people. They would almost be happy if people didn’t buy any products.
The big players will be the product providers. This is just the next stage in their evolution. People who predicted the death of the life company got it wrong; it’s just the reinvention and they have turned into big admin platforms.
It’s important to have financial education in schools but I think it’s a rare skill to be someone who can communicate with a 12-year-old. Most of the content is just one message and one way of saying everything.
As soon as you make it relevant to people and something they want to know the answer to, they sit up and listen. It’s not just something that starts at school and then ends. There’s a common theme in how we talk to people and finding what makes it relevant.
I’ve always thought the adviser platforms are just the new life and pension companies. It’s just the new way of doing business.
I like the Lifetime Isa, but there are wrinkles that need to be ironed out. Fundamentally, people understand it.
People don’t understand pension tax relief. They understand the idea of a bonus, the £1 for every £4, and people like the flexibility.
George Osborne needs to get rid of this stupid lifetime allowance. It doesn’t help anybody. He needs to do whatever he can do to simplify it.
