Free, impartial and face-to-face? Don’t make me laugh

The Treasury apparently favours involving product providers in delivering the chancellor’s surprise, random and completely unplanned promise to provide a guidance service to all retirees.

Fos also reports in its latest Annual Review that over 96 per cent of its complaints came from product providers.

The quest seems to be the ability to provide free, impartial and face-to-face guidance.

Free? Nothing, absolutely nothing, is free. Everything costs something, even if you are not actually asked to pay for it. Legal Aid is not free. The NHS is not free. Presumably, if the service is offered by product providers, it will be the customers of those product providers who will pay through higher premiums and other product charges, which may not be fair.

What guidance is supposed to mean over and above advice just demonstrates how far removed the Treasury is from the sector it oversees

Impartial? Holy smoke, the industry has spent the best part of the last six years pontificating over independent and restricted advice, what it means and how to deliver it. What impartial is supposed to mean, over and above independent or restricted, and what guidance is supposed to mean, over and above advice, just demonstrates how far removed the Treasury is from the sector it oversees.

Face-to-face? No one can fail to be aware of the complete lack of trust in product providers by the general public. A serious review of the most frequent sources of advice for those who do not have an adviser and consideration of the most trusted advice and guidance brands would inform this debate.

And if, as reported, civil servants are just required to deliver what the chancellor promised, this demonstrates the complete intellectual bankruptcy of our government. It would clearly be preferable if the chancellor, or any minister for that matter, did not make promises that could not be kept. But if he or she does make such a commitment, surely it is the obligation of a professional servant of the people to advise the temporary guardians of power that their ideas or promises are simply not deliverable, instead of trying to pretend otherwise?

I actually believe it is possible to deliver good, low-cost impartial and independent advice. However, while advisory firms are under no obligation to offer it and providers have an abysmal record of delivering it, civil servants should confront the chancellor with the truth instead of kowtowing to his pipe dream.

Gill Cardy is network development director of ValidPath