Following, no doubt, many hours of meetings and consultations, our regulator is introducing new rules ’to shift behaviour and focus’. In future we’ll have to ‘deliver good outcomes for customers, consider their needs and learn from awareness of what customers experience’. A couple of things here? Would you deal with an adviser who didn’t do any of the above? Surely market forces would quickly sort them out. And, yes, we need laws to say it’s illegal to murder or beat up others. But do we also need rules making it mandatory to be jolly nice at all times? Well, in some cases, yes, but I do think this takes stating the bleedin’ obvious to a new level…
“Worry for profession as young adviser numbers plummet”
There are around 31,000 advisers currently authorised by the FCA to give advice. Of these only around 6% are under 30 and 84% of all advisers are male. There are 209,000 solicitors, 7,000 young ones enter the profession each year and 52% of all solicitors are now female.
