This, I guess, is a sign that the regulation of our business is to expand still further. And that so is its cost, paid for by us (as advisers) and so ultimately you as clients. The FCA, as rehearsed many times on these pages, is only part of that cost. There’s the Financial Services Compensation Scheme which has nine directors, the highest paid of whom earns £640k; and the Financial Ombudsman Service (eight, total pay £1.5m). Yes, it’s sad that we need them, a reflection of the number of bad eggs in the business etc. But despite 30 years of this, nothing much seems to have changed, apart from the size and number of NGOs involved. So, time for a reset? Dream on.
“Financial advice provides £47,000 wealth uplift in a decade”
After a meeting of financial advisers this week, a younger member of my team asked me if I thought there were actually too many financial advisers. ‘How can there be?’, was my first reaction, ’there were over 100,000 of us in the ‘90s, now there are only around 25,000.
