According to Paul Lewis of the BBC’s MoneyBox programme, to get a good deal,you should go to a big, national company, rather than a broker ‘over the local cab shop in the high street’. Now, there are good and bad advisers everywhere. If you arrange your mortgage or invest your money with one of those big, national companies, you may meet a great adviser you like and trust who sticks with you through thick and thin. You may prefer something less ‘relational’ (have I just made up a word?) and more transactional, with the knowledge that the company itself is big enough to still be around next time you need them. Those who come to us want, I think, a more personal service. And experience shows that, more often than not, the smaller, local company is as, if not more likely to be around next time you need them. Whatever happened to those armies of financial advisers in banks, who would happily flog you whatever mortgage or product you’d buy until a few years ago; or to the Man from the Pru, come to that? So, Mr Paul Lewis of BBC’s MoneyBox, small can often be beautiful. And things have, I think, moved on. There really aren’t that many brokers ‘over the local cab shop in the high street’ any more. In fact, I can’t remember when I last saw a cab shop in a high street. Uber rules. KO.
““Sir Howard Davies should be ashamed” – brokers react to NatWest chair’s property ladder comments”
‘Just when bankers’ reputations have started to recover’ might be something of an exaggeration. The image of fat cats and their traders earning big bonuses while crashing the economy still endures and has been given further life and legs by the NatWest chairman’s ultimate out-of-touch-with-the-real-world comments.
