Advisers must guide clients through Brexit confusion

Certainly, the long-term impact of the Referendum’s decision on the UK’s future has the potential to be at least as significant as William the Conqueror’s defeat of King Harold, exactly 950 years ago.

As advisers, our role is not to fight old battles, but to guide clients through the current confusion, so as to ensure that their financial futures and plans are as stable and secure as we can possibly make them.

I am sure you will remember how the markets took fright as we approached the year 2000, and how fear of the millennium bug almost caused a complete meltdown.

Not long afterwards, we had what looked like an unstoppable credit boom, followed inevitably by the world’s biggest ever credit crisis.

Lehman Brothers collapsed, and there were even concerns about which clearing bank was still safe to use. In turn, this has been followed by almost a decade of incredibly low interest rates, which has seen the transfer of billions of pounds of value from those with assets to those with debts.

As advisers, one of your most important roles is offering a calming influence – otherwise clients might well be panicked into taking actions in the short-term they would later regret.

As advisers, one of your most important roles is offering a calming influence

The immediate result of the vote to leave has been some extreme short-term gyrations in the world’s markets, not least for the pound and UK share markets.

We can probably anticipate a few months of this uncertainty. I suspect, however, that this will be both much shorter and much less disruptive than the predictions made during the campaign.

In particular, I think we can highlight to clients that a lower pound will provide a timely boost to exporters, which can be expected to quickly feed through the economy.

This, in turn, will create jobs and give a kickstart to our independent future, as we put past arguments behind us and work together for the common good.

Ken Davy is chairman of SimplyBiz