Advisers on the front line: let us know how to help you through these turbulent times.
In January, Financial Adviser set out climate change and diversity and inclusion as our two big themes for the start of 2020. The campaign we ran on the latter has borne fruit: many advisers wrote to us about their strategies. And just in time, too – the Financial Conduct Authority has now stated it will be asking companies about their diversity and inclusion as part of a crackdown on culture.
But the pages of Financial Adviser highlighting the success of our campaign were barely out of their wrappers when Covid-19 marched across Europe and onto our doorstep.
Back in January, who could have expected such a hit to our economy? The US president called coronavirus a “hoax” just a few weeks ago. The UK prime minister told older people to “take it on the chin”. And here we are, with the FTSE 100 dropping from 7,674 on January 17 down to 4,962 on March 16, and a base rate cut to 0.1 per cent – the lowest I have seen.
In 2008, former Buttonwood columnist Christopher Brown-Humes wrote in the Chartered Institute of Securities & Investment magazine that we had experienced a “lost decade” for pension funds, as the crisis wiped out the gains made in pension pots.
If 2020 is following suit, as many are saying, then many people are in for another potential lost decade. And those people will need advice. You are now our financial frontline. The difference is that in 2008 there were far more advisers; just when people need advice the most, the gap is at its widest.
So Financial Adviser will have a new ‘campaign’: how to support advisers as they support concerned clients.
Whether you need increased CPD, more online events, more online features or PDF versions of Financial Adviser delivered to your inbox, let us know and we will make that happen.
Simoney Kyriakou is editor of Financial Adviser
