A short 4 years since the Retail Distribution Review, the UK advice market prepares itself for another big piece of regulation that is likely to alter the who, what, where and when of Financial Advice.
Kaavya Dijendranath
Digital Campaign Marketing Executive at FE
Recent Posts
It’s 2016 and the digital information age is truly upon us – from buying pet insurance to ethical funds, investors don’t have to stretch beyond their mobile phones to buy financial products or dabble in investment markets.
It’s Christmas and whilst everybody is feeling festive – we thought we’d use the 12 Days of Christmas as inspiration and look at 12 ways FE has helped its ‘true loves’ i.e. Advisers this year!
1. Unique Model Portfolio Research
The FE DFM Survey found that whilst nearly 70% of our Adviser clients had invested client money in a Discretionary or Model Portfolio Service, more than 40% of them admitted to finding it ‘Extremely difficult’ or ‘Very difficult’ to access quality research and analysis on the value of options available to them. We soon found that the results of the survey echoed an industry wide concern about the lack of transparency around performance, charging and risk mandates for model portfolios. This lack of research available to Advisers also meant that they were unable to conduct objective analysis on the suitability of the solutions they were choosing, particularly on an ongoing basis.
Recent research from Standard Life shows that the UK retirement market will see nearly £700 billion come through the system in the next ten years. In April and May alone of this year nearly 250,000 payments were made to customers from their pension pots, worth some £1.8 billion. The new pension freedoms are acting as a catalyst for adventurous investors to turn their backs on standard annuities in search of alpha from higher risk investments; the most popular of these being income drawdown solutions with £1.3bn invested in over the same period.
Time and again, advisers seem to find themselves in hot water with the FCA Financial Conduct Authority over not demonstrating the suitability of their investment advice adequately.
Today’s financial landscape boasts a wide variety of methods to invest client assets. Irrespective of portfolio size or life stage of the investor; there is a solution that can match their risk level and specific objectives. Whilst this comes as great news for advisers and investors – it often leaves paraplanners with a whole lot more to think about when conducting due diligence.
Time and again, advisers seem to find themselves in hot water with the FCA Financial Conduct Authority over not demonstrating the suitability of their investment advice adequately.
Not all technology is equal...
Investment research today involves more than looking at Money Marketing with an old ruler and a dry highlighter. The financial advice industry is now supported by a wide variety of cutting-edge research technology that is designed to help advisers with the knowledge and analysis they need to give sound investment advice to their clients.