A Surrey-based financial adviser has seen his enquiries double since the Bank of England lowered interest rates to a new historic low earlier this month.
Keith Churchouse of Chapters Financial said he has been contacted by a number of people who were uncertain of what to do now interest rates have been lowered to 0.25 per cent by the Bank of England.
“We have seen a straight doubling of enquiries,” he stated. “I think after the referendum a lot of people who were shocked by the result moved forward on a standard basis and when we had the base rate drop in August that in itself was not a surprise.
“What was a surprise was that it is starting to become clear that interest rates are going to fall further and are likely to remain low for many years to come and it was that which saw a doubling of enquiries from people who had been hunting returns on their cash for some time and achieved meagre returns, but realised they wouldn’t be able to in future.
“We have just had our best trading month in 12 years and we are anticipating a very buoyant autumn.”
Mr Churchouse said the clients coming to him all had reasonable levels of assets and came to his firm having done their research and understanding its charging structure and services.
Phil Perry, director of Cheshire-based Ark Financial Planning, said his firm has seen a boom in demand but said this had been a trend pre-dating the interest rate decision and the Brexit referendum.
“Generally we are extremely busy in a number of areas but I don’t think it has been brought about by anything specific,” he commented. “I think people are aware they cannot do things by themselves and they need to take advice.
“We don’t physically advertise about anything we do apart from Unbiased and all the work we get is by referral. I would say we have not seen an increase since the interest rate decision. I know interest rates being low will have an impact on people’s savings but they weren’t getting anything before anyway.”
