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. Why do you think there’s an ‘advice gap?’ Thinking about it, however, the problem is not too many advisers, but too few ‘profitable’ clients. Most of those 100,000 were actually selling savings plans, life insurance and pensions for commission. The plans they (or, rather, we) sold were great; provided you remembered they were ‘long-term’ and didn’t cash them in for at least 10 years. Many, of course, did and so they were regulated away. Most advisers are now only able to run a sustainable business helping those who already have money, rather than those hoping to make some. The financial services equivalent of ‘health and safety gone mad’ perhaps; or the law of unexpected consequences.
“Top 10 FCA Fines 2022”
Here’s a Top 10 of which no one wants to be a part. Fines handed out by the FCA totalled almost £216m, all of which goes to the Treasury’s ‘Consolidated Fund’.
