If we give you actual financial advice which results in you doing something which we arrange for you, then we’re giving you advice. If we, as we often do when someone gets in touch whom we can’t really help, ‘point you in the right direction’ and let you get on with it, is that ‘advice’ or ‘guidance’? What’s the difference? Well, that’s what this debate is all about, as if it’s ‘advice’, we carry the can, and shouldn’t have told you anything without fully appraising your financial and probably personal situation and inside leg measurement. Which takes time and will cost you money. If we give you a bit of guidance, you sort it out for yourself, and it goes wrong, whose fault is that? Quite possibly ours; and there’s the rub.
“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.
