What does the general public want from a financial adviser? What do clients actually want from their advisers? Are the two things the same?
Starting out in financial services over 20 years ago as a home service agent with the Co-operative Insurance Society, and hearing the older agents at the time say ‘things have changed since we started’, I was under no illusion then that I had joined a constantly fluctuating profession.
I had moved into financial services from the printing industry, an industry which itself had seen many dramatic changes resulting in my job becoming obsolete.
I am beginning to wonder if the role of a financial adviser is heading down the same route. This is at a time when there is a saving gap, when new pension freedoms require advice and the mortgage market is picking up.
In my days at CIS, I was little more than a salesman, but I was actually allowed to tell someone that if they died without any life assurance in place they could leave their loved ones in a hole.
I could tell people that if they did not save for their retirement they would have only what the state provided. I was allowed to tell people that if they wanted to save for a rainy day or university fees or that special holiday, they would have to put something away in order to achieve their aims.
Before you ask: ‘wouldn’t you like to go back to those days?’ The answer is ‘no’, because the industry has moved on for the better and advisers today are qualified to a higher standard than ever before. The complaints from the advisory sector are minimal and the professionalism shown by the vast majority of advisers today is of the highest order.
So, to try and answer my original question, what does the general public want? Well what they think they want and what they need is not necessarily the same.
What they want, and have been told should be available, is a free advisory service that offers 24-hour advice (that can be questioned 40 years later, leading to costly legal cases). They want to be told that they can retire, by saving £20 a month into a pension plan, to the Bahamas and live in the sun. They want to be told that they can borrow whatever they want and not worry about ever paying back. They want to be told that as a family with three children it is not their responsibility to protect them in the event of death or earlier critical illness.
What do they need? Well advisers reading this will know the answer.
Clients have already decided they want sound financial advice.
But how can advisers keep offering a service to clients and attract those that need the advice, when they are been attacked from all sides? When they are being told they are not allowed to earn a living doing the job? When sound advice given 20 years ago can be brought into question using today’s rules?
The government needs a strong financial advisory service in order to see the benefits from the bold pension reforms they have put in place. What we as advisers need from the government is their backing.
This is not to suggest that I want a profession that is above the law and not answerable in any way, but the client has to at least feel wronged, rather than be told they ‘may have a claim.’ If it is only to make the new pension freedoms work, then that alone is worth it.
We now have the kind of freedom that should get people back to saving for retirement, yet already I have had over 10 unsolicited phone calls asking if I have heard about these freedoms.
The financial sector has not made any friends out there and we have to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask what we want for the future. Advisers have to support each other and stop chasing the quick buck. The product providers have to stop bickering. The platforms have to stop fighting each other and the banks have to decide what place they have in the market.
Adrian Gill is an IFA at Adrian Gill Wealth Management
