This message popped up when I logged on to my Lloyds bank account: ‘Did you know that we can offer you a Personal Financial Advice Service through our partnership with Schroders Personal Wealth? Eligibility criteria, fees and charges apply’. Maybe, I thought, this will close the ‘advice gap’, with the banks and others once again giving much-needed help and advice to the masses. Then I checked the ‘eligibility criteria’: ‘At least £100,000 in savings and £100,000 of sole annual income’. So just under 5% of the working population. Not exactly the masses.
“Letter of authority: Why now is the right time for change”
This may sound like a non-issue from outside the world-of-financial-advice bubble. It is the bain, however, of the daily working lives of many of us, particularly of those paid by we advisers to do the dirty work of dealing with the many providers with whom we have to work.
