I was delighted to join Financial Adviser’s array of columnists in 2005 because it gave me a direct line to an industry I had covered for so long.
As reporter, editor and now agony uncle on Money Mail, I am a consumer journalist to the core. Through their letters, phone calls and emails, readers tell me of their interactions with the financial world, more often negative than not.
Sad to say I became a hated figure in the industry, particularly when campaigning on the disastrous consequences of mortgage endowments sold in the 1990s.
Financial Adviser allowed me to present my arguments in a different – perhaps more industry-friendly – form than I was able to through a column in the Daily Mail, where the consumer must come first. It also allowed me to reach a far wider range of advisers, who both agree and take issue with my views.
I like to think that in the past decade or so we have got to know – and understand - each other better.
I do not expect you always to agree with me – that would be very dull. But I do hope that occasionally you may think again about some of the issues that affect us.
Tony Hazell is a financial journalist and a columnist with Financial Adviser since 2005
